Kitchen Counter Faux Paint Redo

So...I totally lied.  I am not ready to reveal the family room yet.  Marty ended up getting a horrible stomach bug that had him completely down for the count on Saturday, so we didn't get the project in the family room finished.

Of course, I am brilliant and ended up doing another project, that was WAY more time consuming and complicated.

I faux painted my kitchen counters.

So, here is a little play by play of how this happened...in case you are wondering.  I do have to apologize that many of the pictures are from my cell phone - another instance of texting pictures to my family to show them how crazy I am.

First thing we did was lightly sand the counters - we used 220 grit sandpaper, just enough to take the shine off.  We then taped everything off and got to priming.  I just used a small foam roller to get this, and had to use a small brush to get in some of the corners.

We used KILZ brand, water-based tintable primer.  We had it tinted a light tan, because that was the base color of the granite sample I was trying to copy.

First coat of primer going on, goodbye green!

One counter done

During the project

We ended up needing two coats of primer to cover the dark green counters.  This is after one coat:

 And after two coats

Here it is, completely primed (at 11:45 p.m.  If you are going to try this yourself, don't start at 9 p.m., just a word of advise)

The next morning I got to working on dabbing on the colors.  Pretty soon Marty was hit with that pretty awful stomach bug.  I would also not recommend trying to do this with four small children while your husband is out of commission.  It took FOREVER (just over 7 hours - which is equal to forever when you're standing in a kitchen dabbing paint) and there was lots of whining and crying - from all parties involved.

I ended up using 8 different colors of acrylic craft paint and mixing a couple colors to get the right combination.  These aren't all different colors, I got 2 of every small bottle - and this isn't all the paint I used.

I used sea sponges to get the job done.

I took my little granite sample to the craft store and spent a good 30 minutes picking out the colors.  I was quite worried as I got going - much like the blogs I had read about how to do this warned - but kept plugging along.

First color...I was scared. 

Two colors...looking slightly better

Seven colors in...feeling more confident.

And then the final color completed it!

After I got the colors how I wanted, we started the clear coat.  I chose Polycrillic semi-gloss clear coat for the first three coats, then I switched to two coats of high gloss to get it a little shinier. I just put this on using a foam spongy brush. (Those craft brushes with the little wooden dowel type handle and they're a black sponge thing)

 

 

 
 

And there you have it!  I am just about finished getting the kitchen all put together for the whole kitchen reveal (not that there's really  much more than these counters...).  But we can't put anything on the counters for a few more days, and there's a couple other decor things I want to do to finish up.

Even though it was very time consuming and tedious, I'm very glad I did this project.
The whole thing cost right around $100, and it completely made over my kitchen.

I'm one happy girl!