Furniture Feature Friday

Every Friday, we feature a beautiful Miss Mustard Seed’s® Milk Paint project in our Move Mountains With Milk Paint Facebook Group - a thriving and bustling online community where creative minds come together to inspire, help and encourage one another.

This week’s featured piece is a gorgeous secretary desk that was quite the steal, but it almost wound up getting kicked to the curb! Come along for the ride as Beth Battista shares her up’s and down’s with her very FIRST Miss Mustard Seed’s® Milk Paint project!

Prepping the Secretary Desk

Beth found our Facebook group while she was searching for ways to paint her secretary. She got it for a steal at the end of January, and was eager to give Milk Paint a try.

The day she brought it home, Beth and her husband accidentally dropped it, breaking one of the front legs right off! (How many of you have dropped your furniture while moving it because we’re raising both of our hands over here!)

Fortunately, her husband fixed it so that it was even stronger than before. Beth confessed that she almost hauled it to the curb because it was in worse shape than she had originally thought.

Oh Beth, we’ve been there too!

To prep her piece for Milk Paint, Beth cleaned her secretary desk with blue Dawn dish detergent and warm water. After rinsing the soap off, and letting it dry, she scuff sanded to create “tooth” on the surface. This gave her Milk Paint something to grip.

If you’d like to dive more into prepping your piece for Milk Paint, check out our guide to prep work here:

Painting the Secretary Desk

When it came to picking a color for her project, Beth was inspired by this dresser that our founder, Marian Parsons (aka Miss Mustard Seed), painted back in 2014.

Marian used a base coat of Lucketts Green followed by a resist (you can use our Beeswax or Wax Puck) and a coat of Boxwood.

Beth followed suit with her piece. She started by applying a coat of Lucketts Green. Once that was dry, she lightly sanded with 220 grit sandpaper, which smoothed out any lumps and grit that dried on the surface. Then, she applied two coats of Boxwood, also sanding with 220 grit in between coats.

For the interior, where all of the sweet cubbies are, she scuff sanded and applied three coats of Linen. To smooth everything out again, she lightly sanded with 320 grit sandpaper.

To finish and seal her beautiful piece, she wet sanded/lightly distressed with Hemp Oil and 320 grit sandpaper. If you’d like to learn how to wet sand, check out this tutorial:

The cubbies were sealed with our clear Furniture Wax.

To shine up the original hardware, Beth used Bar Keeper’s Friend.

This gentle cleanser can be squirted onto an old toothbrush and rubbed over dull hardware to shine it up again! Once the original Chippendale handles, keyhole cover plates and knobs were cleansed, Beth rinsed them off, dried them, and re-installed them on her secretary desk.

For a fun surprise, she lined the drawers with leftover wallpaper that used to hang in her bathroom!

A Boxwood Beauty Brought Back to Life!

We are so impressed with Beth’s makeover for lots of reasons. First, this was her first Milk Paint project! Didn’t she do an incredible job for a first-timer? We were also so impressed by her tenacity, despite some setbacks like a broken leg and a Milk Paint learning curve. She hung in there and took this beautiful Boxwood secretary across the finish line.

Beth also took advantage of the help and advice we offer in our Move Mountains Facebook Group. Whenever she had a question or ran into issues, she hopped on Facebook, tapped us on the shoulder, and received lots of encouragement, tips and answers.

We encourage you to take a page out of Beth’s book and join us!

If you’re not a Facebook user, you can reach out to us on Instagram or via email at hello@mmsmilkpaint.com. Our talented team is ready to assist you with all of your Milk Paint needs!

Ready to Start Your Own Milk Paint Project?

Our retailers sell from brick-and-mortar locations as well as online shops! Use our Retailer Locator Map to search by State, City, Country, Services or Online Shopping availability. Here’s a quick video tutorial showing how it works: