How to Get an Aged Look With Minimal Sanding

I live in the bay area of California. There are free pianos are craigslist ALL the time. I think it is the craziest thing! I wish I had a huge house so I could have all of them! I got this beauty for free.

Before painting

Right after painting

I knew I wanted to refinish it in someway. After a bit of Pinterest browsing, I decided on a matte black finish. I wanted it to look really old and antiqued looking. I decided on chalk paint so I didn't have to sand the piano down beforehand.

I used plaster of paris to make my chalk paint. You make a paste with the plaster of paris and water, and then add latex paint and mix. The ratio is 1/3 plaster of paris paint to 2/3 paint.

The chalk paint was pretty thick, but I went ahead with the project without thinning it out, and I'm glad I did! The end result was exactly what I wanted.

I wanted lighter spots to come through on the paint....almost white. I figured I would have to do some sort of white wash on it, but thanks to the thick chalk paint, the plaster of paris did that for me.

This project literally took 30 minutes to do! That's crazy for painting a piano!

Once the paint had dried on the piano, I lightly sanded the edges to make it look even more aged.

I finished it off with a polyacrylic finishing spray. I could not be more happy with the finished product!