How To Create A Distressed Finish On A Farmhouse Bed

Mr. DIY built our daughter's Farmhouse bed in 4 days. I wish I could say it only took me finishing it! Even though I started on the finish the day after Mr. DIY finished the bed, it took me a good 10 days to get it the way I wanted it.

Getting the perfect distressed finish takes a lot longer than just painting it. There are so many distressed finishes out there, so I thought I'd finish a few samples and let our daughter choose one.

I started out with two different wood stains. The one on the left is Minwax Jacobean. The one on the right is Rustoleum Driftwood with a little Jacobean mixed in. One of these would be the base coat.

Once the base coat dried, I applied a thin, watered down paint (Lowe's Signature Ultra White in Satin). The sample of the right doesn't have any stain under it. I was hoping our daughter would pick that one since it would be a lot easier. I used some fine grit sandpaper to distress the samples. 

 I thought I'd do one more  sample. The sample on the right is full strength paint over Jacobean stain. It looked a little more chippy.

I was surprised when she chose the left one.


The funny thing is, (and I didn't realize it until just now) that I should have stained it with Jacobean and instead, I stained it with Driftwood, mixed with Jacobean. Oops!

The first thing I did was stain the back of the headboard...

Then, the front.

I didn't take a photo of it, but despite applying the wrong stain, I managed to finish the back side of the bottom of the headboard (the brace) and it turned our pretty close to the sample she picked. 
I don't think she liked the finish on the headboard though. When she saw the finish on the headboard, she said that she could always paint it white at another time.

I took that to mean she'd like the paint to be whiter. So, I applied 2 thin coats of watered down paint, plus a dry brush coat. I applied this to the frame of the headboard and what I call the brace (below the headboard)

The frame has 2+ coats and the center has only 1.

It almost looks like the headboard has just been painted at this point, but the grain of the wood still shows through a bit.

Once I got the right brightness, I started distressing with fine grit sandpaper.

After sanding and removing all the sanded bits, I applied more stain to the sanded spots.

I didn't like the stain on the paint, so I sanded a bit more, 

Then, applied more paint over those spots using a very small amount of watered down paint and with a dry brush.

Perfect!

I finished the headboard with a coat of clear Polycrylic Satin.

I applied the same technique to the side and foot rails. The whole process took about 10 days. 
Even though the finish on the bed was a little different than the sample, it turned out great!

Hope you'll stop by next time to see how the bed looks in our daughter's apartment!

UPDATE: you can see the finished bed HERE.

Pam

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Disclaimer: The above post is about how we built our farmhouse bed. We don't take any responsibility for any errors or results obtained from using this information. Using power tools can result in injury. When using power tools, use safety equipment.