Pitfalls of painting pine...

The dawn of Annie Sloan chalk paint has turned everyone into a furniture painter. And that's a good thing. I think creativity is to be encouraged and up cycling is good for the planet. There is one type of furniture however that requires a little more forethought than just slapping a bit of ASCP on it.

Pine.
The knottiness can ruin your work as the knots continue to seep resin for years and this will eventually discolour your paintwork and spoil your piece.

Traditionally you would use Knotting solution to seal the knots, but this is only suitable when being over painted with an oil based paint. Most modern furniture painting is done with water based paints like emulsion (latex) or chalk paint.
So what's a girl to do?

It's generally safe to assume a factory lacquered modern pine piece will have had the knots treated and should be okay to paint if you're not sanding and removing that treatment. But if it's waxed pine, untreated pine or you're just not sure, then a stain sealing, high adhesion super primer is the answer. It's water based so you can over paint with water based paints, no problem.

I use Blackfriars Problem Solving Primer. One coat over the knots and another coat over the whole thing. 

No they're not paying me to write this. It's just great stuff.

This is a large old pine chest that sits in my hallway. It's the most useful piece of furniture as all the bedding for the sofa bed fits in the top section, and the drawer at the bottom fits the dressing up clothes in. I think it's called a Mule chest.

This floor is NOT staying!

But I don't do pine. I'm totally with the Scandinavians on this. Orange as a colour is wrong and must be obliterated.
So, two coats of Blackfriars on every knot. ( I know I said do the whole thing, but I want to distress back to wood here not primer, and I'm using chalk paint next so I don't have to prime the whole thing.)

Then I chose three paint samples from Wilkinsons, only £1 each and they have some lovely colours.
I turned a few samples of a mid grey 'Mineral Stone' into home made chalk paint with plaster of paris dissolved in hot water then added to the paint. The ratio is 3 parts paint to one part plaster of paris and as much water as you need to make it the right consistency. Because this is a huge thing I had to keep adding more and more water as I went, as it kept on thickening up. Then what happens is the ratio of the paint decreases and the chalk paint becomes less and less opaque as you go. No matter, I did two coats of transparent grey chalk paint then finished with a coat of pure paint so I got the coverage I was after.
This piece of furniture has been previously waxed and that's why I wanted to use chalk paint. That's the beauty of chalk paint, you CAN paint over previously waxed furniture. All I did for preparation was sugar soaping and removing the handles.
Once it was all grey I rubbed the corners, edges and mouldings with candle wax. My chosen top coat colour was 'Coastline' from Wilkinsons. It's a gorgeous expensive looking cream. Now the piece had been primed with the chalk paint undercoat, I could just use pure paint without adding anything to it. Those sample pots go a long way, even on something this size.
And that's as far as I've got. I'm hoping to finish it this weekend. I want to add some embellishment to the panels on the front...

I've got paint all over the floor, but that's okay as I'm on the verge of ordering our new wooden flooring and these nasty tiles will be covered soon. You might think that after a four year wait I would know exactly what I want for the floor. Well, I did but when the samples came, I decided the grey washed oak I had wanted, looked a little too frantic. I've had to go back to the drawing board, you can only order 3 samples at a time and they take 5 days to come so it's a long process. It's a huge expense and I don't want to make a mistake! I was about to place an order yesterday, when I became paralysed by fear and ordered more samples instead. This could take some time...

You can see how the chest turned out here.