Painting a Dresser with Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint- part un

I am usually a chalk paint girl but I've been wanting to try milk paint for a long time, I just couldn't find any stockists in our area. Then when I was in Utah visiting Maddie we stopped at a little shop to buy some chalk paint for her dresser makeover...and they had bags of Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint!

There was much excitement and exclaiming over all the lovely colors but as I had no furniture project in mind, and was spending all my money on the lovely children, it didn't seem practical to purchase at that time. So we bought the chalk paint and went home.

Where I agonized and obsessed about it all night and then went back and bought a bag the next day.

Once I got home I had my eye out for the perfect practice piece and when this little antique dresser showed up on Craigslist I pounced.

Here she is in my garage, er, workroom

 I am a complete sucker for any furniture on casters. Love. Plus, get a look at these little keyholes on each drawer. More love!

Those are the good parts. You can also sort of see that the wood has a really weird rough finish on it. My best guess is that somebody stained it and then sprayed some kind of polyurethane on it that beaded up all over like this. When you touch it there is a feel like sandpaper.

At this point I probably should have sanded the whole thing down to try and smooth out that finish, but I'm always trying to see what is the least amount of work I can do and still end up with something I like so I didn't. Bad Shelley. I did wipe the whole thing down with a damp cloth and noticed that a lot of the dark brown finish was coming off. To keep that from bleeding through the milk paint I sprayed the whole thing with a coat of Zinsser Shellac. I read somewhere online about using it to help milk paint stick without using a bonding agent and to prevent bleed through. 

The shellac only takes about 30 minutes to dry so while it was doing its thing I went ahead and mixed the milk paint. Of course I had spent days preparing myself for this momentous and important occasion by memorizing all the tips for MMSMP on the website. You can see them here. There is lots of good information, but the main message is that milk paint is unpredictable in how it will stick and or crackle and flake on a piece of furniture and that, my friends, is part of the charm. Maybe the main part of the charm? I don't really know, I've only done one dresser.

Anywho...I mixed one part paint and one part water and set a timer on my phone to mix that paint with a wire whisk for three minutes. 

The paint had a much thinner consistency than any other paint I've worked with which the directions said to expect. The color was gorgeous! So I started slapping that stuff on. As expected, the first coat didn't cover well but I forged on and continued painting.

Here we are after the first coat.

And the drawers. I was careful to not get paint on the bity keyholes since I wanted the metal to contrast with the paint.

By the time I finished all of the drawers the body of the dresser was dry enough for me to put on the second coat. Then I decided to do a very quick and dirty third coat. As the paint was drying some parts began to crackle but I didn't see any flaking. I really wanted flaking. So I decided to leave it alone overnight and see where we were after the paint was well and truly dry.

And that is where I leave you friends, mostly because I don't have the rest of the pictures uploaded and I still need to wax. I pinky promise to post the last steps and final reveal tomorrow.