House & Home : Farrow & Ball, A Painting Project.

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One of the things that I am learning about house renovations is just how many "projects" it involves.
Yesterday I thought it might be both fun & productive to write a list of every single job we still need still to do or to finish, it would give us some focus.... when I got to no.129, I stopped. And that was only on the ground floor. Clearly I need to change my definition of fun!
What we do currently have is an awful lot of unfinished projects....the kind of tasks that it wouldn't take much or long to complete, but somehow there is never quite enough time. The plan for June is get a whole load of these jobs finished, before we start on the "big" stuff again.
Quite a few months ago, way before Christmas in fact, I started some painting projects.
Our house was/is very very brown. And rather dark & gloomy. I'd happily paint the entire house & its contents white....but my husband would hate that!
So gradually we are painting - walls & furniture - various shades of white & the palest of greys.

For my first paint project & in order to achieve some fairly quick updating, I decided to paint & recycle furniture that we already owned or had in storage.
First on my list was a corner unit - owned previously by my in-laws. Not a piece of great value but something that I thought it might be nice to keep in the house.
I chose Farrow & Ball's Cornforth White which is in fact a very very light grey. I can't even tell you how much I love it, I honestly think it might be my favourite paint colour ever! It's timeless & classic whilst also looking very contemporary & chic.

I've painted walls but never furniture so followed the advice that a friend had given me. Make sure you are painting on a clean surface, lightly give the furniture a quick sand first & don't rush!
I used Farrow & Ball's White & Light tone undercoat & primer - this item required two coats of this. I then used two coats of Farrow & Ball's Cornforth White.
I'm quite a messy painter but the good thing about painting an old (and not very valuable) item, is that it doesn't have to be perfect.
I had ordered a 2.5 litre tin of Cornforth White & a 5 litre tin of undercoat....the paint goes on beautifully - the "coverage" is excellent my husband informs me - and it also goes a very long way.
So far, I have painted a chest of drawers, a wooden kitchen chair & I'm now in the process of painting a some freestanding bookshelf. And I still have paint to spare.
I have also painted an old fireplace which I found in my father in law's shed - I painted it in Farrow & Ball's All White Estate Eggshell & it's come up beautifully. It needs to be mounted/placed correctly in the living room but I will share photos when it's completed, hopefully next month.
I have loved these paint projects, they've been enormous fun & very satisfying. They can also be done in a fairly short amount of time - always a good thing! It's so easy to give something a new look, it's also very addictive, you start wanting to paint everything - I also find myself spotting items that I don't really need in secondhand shops & imagining what colours I could use to upcycle them!
This project was part of a collaboration with Farrow & Ball.