Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Testing New Products American Paint Company Chalk Paint Review
Lets start this post by saying I hope everyone had a fun Halloween! At hour home, my husband and I enjoyed handing out candy and taking in all the great costumes in our absolutely Halloween crazy neighborhood. In an hour and a half, I was out of over $50 in candy!! However, the night was sort of sad too, because this was the first year neither of my boys went out! On the upside I got to eat candy without abandon. Or on the downside, depending how you look at it.
So onto my review. As a blogger with a business specializing in furniture revivals, I really want to give my audience great information and resources for doing furniture makeovers. So, I thought I would start by reviewing products I use regularly and those that I am experimenting with. Hopefully, my experiences can inspire you… or at the very least save you some grief!!
My first review is of American PaintCompany’s (APC) chalk paint and wax. In this post, you can read about the first piece I finished with APC.
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| American Chalk Paint Rushmore |
Now let me tell you, Annie Sloan ChalkPaint (ASCP) will probably always be a first love, but I like to experiment. So, after completing many projects using ASCP, my eyes started to wander to other color palettes and I started to wonder how other brands of paints might perform. The first new product to catch my eye was American Paint Company’s chalk paint. This company offers a range of products, including chalk paints, waxes and some specialty products. What really excited me about this company was that their products are all natural, zero VOC, eco-friendly and solvent free paint… and they are American made.
After logging onto their website, I discovered a site that was user friendly and offered a ton of easy to find advice and tips on theirproducts. After reading up on the products, I visited the link to my nearest retailer and ordered a selection of paints and waxes for my next project. This ordering experience started my APC relationship off to a great start. Like most moms and bloggers, I was catching up on business later at night when the family has finally settled down. I emailed Donna at Painted PastDesigns with questions about my selections and the company, expecting to hear from her the next day. Within minutes she got back to me to answer my questions! She was sweet and helpful and it made me even more excited to try the products. When my products arrived, it was like Christmas and she even threw in a Painted Past Designs wax brush for me...now how nice it that!!
Working with the product:
The colors I selected were Rushmore, a light warm stone color, Navajo, a beautiful crisp white and the dark and light waxes.
I ended up just using the Rushmore color on my dresser. Like ASCP, there is no priming necessary although the company recommends lightly sanding shiny pieces on their website. The ACP paint seemed thicker to start out with then ASCP, but it can be thinned with water, which I generally also do to ASCP.
The piece I was painting was a dark cherry, so I needed closer to three coats for good coverage. I have since read from the tips on the APC website that they recommend basing dark furniture in a light grey shade before a light shade to help get the best coverage. I have also since used the Navajo White color on some medium tone woods and coverage was excellent, only requiring 1-2 coats
The feel of the APC paint was drier and rougher than ASCP. I would recommend thinning the APC paints with water especially on your second coat for the smoothest results. I was also able to sand it easily to soften brush strokes and it did not leave a sheen difference. I feel when I sand ASCP it can leave a different sheen between sanded and un-sanded places. This was completely uniform. I also felt like the adhesion was excellent…like I had covered the pieces with cement. Itwasnt going anywhere.
