One of my first stories for the newspaper was about how I would never, ever, ever give in and paint my grandmother’s china cabinet, even though Annie Sloan paint was all the rage. Well, guess what? I caved in, so here’s the updated story. Have you given in to the trend?
It was the early 1960’s when my grandmother decided to paint her small walnut china cabinet a queasy shade of avocado green. It was all the rage and I’m sure it was fabulous — then. By the time I inherited it in the early 90’s, I worked like a dog in the sweltering heat to remove every smidgen of green and restore its natural walnut finish. For years, it looked great and I swore I’d never let paint touch it again. That was before decorating maven, Annie Sloan, appeared on the home decor scene and convinced the entire civilized world we needed to take our perfectly good furniture, beat it up, paint it, sand it down and make it look like it was pulled from the trash heap.
I happen to know that Annie Sloan (who built a successful kingdom with her line of soft, muted paints) raised three sons, so perhaps that’s the reason she decided to go with the old, dinged-up furniture look. Having a house full of boys, it’s a case of the standard, “if you can’t beat them, (literally) join them.”
Suddenly, women around the world were determined to distress every table, chair and lamp in sight. Some went as far as to hit their furniture with heavy chains in order to . . . click HERE to see the rest of the story on al.com.