How to Make Milk Paint Antiquing Paste
Milk paint is an environmentally-safe way to paint furniture to give it a weathered, antique look. An ancient decorating material, milk paint has been used for centuries to coat furniture and was common in American colonial homes. It is made from a combination of skim milk, hydrated lime and chalk powder, convenient materials you can readily find at your home improvement and grocery stores. Once made, use your homemade recipe to paste over antique wood furniture to preserve the natural color of the wood and to bring out the detail of the grain in the wood. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- 1 quart skim milk
- 2-gallon bucket
- 1 ounce hydrated lime
- Wooden spoon
- Lime-proof pigment powder (optional)
- 2 pounds chalk (optional)
- Natural hair paintbrush
Instructions
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Pull a 1-quart container of skim milk out of the refrigerator and let it warm to room temperature on the counter. While it is warming, gather the rest of your ingredients.
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Add 1 ounce of hydrated lime to a 2-gallon plastic bucket. Use a wooden spoon to slowly stir room-temperature skim milk into the hydrated lime until the powder becomes the consistency of cream.
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Stir in the remainder of the quart of skim milk or enough of the milk to make the paint gain the consistency of typical paint. It should not be as thin as water, nor as thick as cream, but somewhere in between.
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4
If desired, add lime-proof pigment powder to the milk paint to give it a color. Consider which tint complements the color scheme for the room or piece of furniture you are painting when deciding whether to add pigment powder to your milk paint.
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Slowly stir 1 to 2 pounds of dry chalk to the mixture until it reaches the consistency of paste. Apply the milk paint antiquing paste to your cabinets, walls or wood furniture with a natural hair paint brush.
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