Master Bedroom Makeover & My CeCe Caldwell's Review

Hello Lovelys, 

Today's post has been in the works for a while now.  I have been wanting to give our master bedroom a makeover for a few years, starting with having the walls painted.  I just recently got around to this massive project about 6 months ago.  I really wanted to get new furniture (bed, end tables, and dresser) but my husband nixed that idea before I could even get the whole sentence out of my mouth!  So, the next best thing was to paint our existing furniture!  He wasn't terribly excited about that either but knew it needed to be done because of the scuffs and marks that had accumulated on the end tables over the years.  His only request was that I not use anything that leaves the furniture feeling "sticky".  (aka wax!)

I am such a big Annie Sloan Chalk Paint fan but I have used it so many times for all of my other painting projects that I decided to do something different and go with CeCe Caldwell's products for this project.  I half way regret it and I'll tell you why later in this post.  

First, here are some "before" pictures of our master bedroom furniture... 

DRESSER

HEADBOARD

I was excited to use CeCe Caldwell's paint because of the 36 colors and multiple finishes to choose from as opposed to just using Annie Sloan's wax to achieve that aged look.  

I ended up choosing "Young Kansas Wheat" as my paint color, "Cypress Umber Dark" Glaze at 4g for my finish, and "Endurance Finish" as my sealer/top coat.  (all by CeCe Caldwell's).  I will explain how I applied each of these below.  

Here are some "After" pictures of our Master Bedroom...

MATERIALS I USED FOR THIS PROJECT...

First, I painted all of the furniture with 2 coats of "Young Kansas Wheat" Chalk/Clay Paint.  CeCe's paint is VERY thick!  If you thought Annie Sloan's chalk paint was thick, wait till you see this stuff!  You definitely have to spend more time spreading it around than ASCP.  However, even as thick as it is, I still needed 2 coats to completely cover the dark wood stain.  I waited over night for it to dry.  Over night wasn't totally necessary, but it does take longer to cure and fully dry than ASCP.  After the paint dried, I applied 1 coat of Endurance Finish by CeCe Caldwell's. (sidenote-if you put glaze or dark wax directly on to your base coat of paint, the paint will absorb ALL of the glaze/wax in the spot where you put your brush and you will end up with a brown smudge that cannot be rubbed out or spread around.  This is why I used Endurance Finish first*   Endurance Finish is NOTHING like clear wax by ASCP in terms of consistency.  It's as thin as water and goes on very wet just like plain water.  It dries very smooth and completely clear and does not yellow or stain your base coat. After letting it dry and harden overnight, I applied 1 coat of Glaze in "Cypress Umber Dark" @ 4g.  *sidenote-the 4g refers to the darkness of the glaze.  You can get it in different strengths to adjust your glaze color depending on the look you are going for.  

This was somewhat of a frustrating disaster!  When I bought the glaze, it came in 2 different containers- 1 for the pigment (left) , the other just clear glaze to mix the pigment with (right, after the pigment was added).  I thought this was kind of cool because you can add as much pigment as you want to make your glaze the right shade for your project.  (just add slowly if you try this because you can always add more color but you cannot take any away) Once I had it mixed, I thought the glaze was pretty and definitely a different look than the dark wax by Annie Sloan, but so much harder to apply! (in my opinion)  Like the Endurance Finish, the glaze is very watery and if you get too much on your brush (which is very easy to do) it's nearly impossible to get off!  I recommend keeping a rag handy to constantly wipe back excess glaze from your furniture in order to avoid ruining your paint job.  This is what I did and still screwed up pretty bad!  I constantly had to wipe back some of the stain and even then I didn't like how it turned out.  In some places I had to go back and start completely over with a new coat of paint because I couldn't remove enough of the glaze.  (sidenote-if you do mess up and have to go back and start over with paint, you cannot just paint your boo boo and then glaze over that one spot.  You have to paint the entire section over again or you'll be able to tell where the boo boo started and stopped!) Uggggghhh I'm getting frustrated just thinking about it.  

Anyways, then I moved on to the knobs.  At first I was going to glaze the entire piece to make it look antique, including the knobs.  Then I messed up on the drawers so badly that I just decided to leave the frame of the end tables and dresser glazed and repaint the face of the drawers with just Young Kansas Wheat.  When I did that, the glazed knobs stuck out like a sore thumb! (in my opinion)... 

Overall, sometimes I look at SOME portions of the furniture and say to myself "wow, I really like how that turned out!"  And then I walk around to the other side of the same piece of furniture and say to myself "uggggggggghhh I hate the way that turned out!"

Full view of the finished project one more time....