Tonight I’m back with a fun DIY tutorial on how to achieve a “French Market Place” look on brand new wooden crates. I have this obsession with wanting an old world look in my home decor, but I also need to know that the materials and pieces we have are safe for kids to be around. So most the time I have ended up learning how to create paint and distressing techniques to get that old worn vintage look on new pieces. One thing I’m learning about painting furniture is it’s really hard to go wrong (when it comes to that old grunge/chippy paint look)

Disclaimer: I was given products to use for this project by Crates & Pallet, and there are affiliate links in this post. But I only reccomend products I love & think you will too. 

Some of you may remember our walk in pantry, HERE. I am always getting questions on how I refinished the crates in there. I actually have several sets of crates from Crates & Pallet in our house, and they all are slightly finished differently. But I thought I would share my basic process to give you all a visual.

These crates come in raw wood. So you can personalize them to your space however you want. For my pantry, I used a darker stain & finished them off with some liming wax and dixie dirt.

For our mudroom I wanted to go slightly lighter & warmer.

First off, I actually opted for watered down latex paint instead of stain. I have a hate-hate relationship with oil based stains. They are messy and sticky. When using watered down paint, it makes the application to pieces with lots corners and edges easy. You just literally sponge it on.

I wanted to go for a chalky, cloudy milk look (is that even a thing? haha!) So I dry brushed some watered down cream paint onto the crates & also applied paint using a wet wipe with some paint on it.

The next part is my favorite- flick and bounce your brush bristles to get some organic looking splashes.

Those three steps are literally all I did to these crates. If you are working with a darker stain, liming wax would work great! Or if you are opting for a lighter finish, you can always load some dark wax on there as well.

Faking natural old wood & wear and tear is  all about showing off those edges and corners.

I am litterally in LOVE with how this piece turned out. If you want to see the whole space & find out how I painted the hutch go HERE.

This painting method is becoming my go to to fake beautiful antique finishes.

So there is my method on how to paint new wood to look old. I will never get tired of distressing pieces. And over time, we all add our own touches to each piece to create a true worn vintage finish.

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