A vanity gets a weathered gray wood look using just chalk paint and wax. Looks so much like real weathered wood in less time with less mess!

Yup. We’re almost there, y’all. The final oh-my-gosh-is-this-powder-room-ever-going-to-be-finished stage?! I say that lovingly. It’s hard to be patient when you have a bathroom vanity sitting smack in the middle of your living room. For an entire month. And you have to climb a flight of stairs every single time you need a potty break.

(Want to see our powder room’s final reveal? Click here for the full “after” tour.)

If you’ve been following along on my Instagram Stories, you probably already know that we survived and it’s done! Huzzah!

But I just know that when I share the reveal of the whole space next week, I’ll get a bunch of questions about our presto change-o vanity, so I’m jumping right on it to spill the quick tutorial if you’re needing to give your own bathroom vanity a perk.

The vanity in our existing powder room when we moved in was already on the new-ish side. The only problem was it had just enough scrapes and nicks that I couldn’t leave it as-is. I’m no stranger to painting furniture to look like wood (thank you “wood” guest bed and “wood” sofa table), so I thought I’d try it all over again, except with a weathered gray wood tone this time instead of brown.

How to Create a Weathered Gray Wood Look with Chalk Paint

Supplies Used: (Some affiliate links are provided below for convenience.)

• Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in French Linen
• Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Wax in Black
• Wax brush
• Dry lint-free rag

The whole painting thing started out by accident. With the wood of this vanity being already in pretty good shape, my original plan was to gray wash the wood with 1 part gray paint and 3 parts water. But since this vanity didn’t have any raised wood grain, it just wasn’t doing it for me. I should have taken a picture, but I managed to gray wash it at 10:00 at night when it was dark out… and trust me, you’re not missing anything.

So I wiped it down with Simple Green and lightly sanded off my not-so-pretty gray wash attempt to go the chalk paint route. (If you prefer Fusion Mineral Paint, you can create the same look with their Bedford paint color and Homestead House Black Wax. I just didn’t have those on hand at the time.)

1. Just paint on two coats of the Annie Sloan French Linen paint.

2. And, after the paint has fully dried, work in small sections (about 2-3 square feet) to rub on the black wax, using the wax brush to work it into any crevices and details. Then, lightly wipe away any excess with a dry rag. The process is almost like painting on the wax but with a little more elbow grease.

Here’s a video by Marian Parsons, if you’ve never waxed furniture before and need more of a visual.

It’s literally a two step process. Well, I guess four, if you actually count adding knobs and hauling the ginormous thing back into the bathroom. I knocked it all out in 2 hours and made it a rush job since I only had hours to complete it before our flooring contractor had to put the room back together after finishing the flooring.

(I did mention this vanity has sat in our living room for a month, right? And I didn’t decide to paint it until hours before it needed to be moved. Procrastinators of the world unite! …tomorrow.)

The photos don’t look much different than the faux wood finishes I’ve painted before, but this one does have more of a gray tone. Blame the photographer (a.k.a. me).

It really does look like weathered wood, doesn’t it?! And it didn’t require messy wood stripping and hours of staining in the garage or anything. If you’ve been following this blog for a year-ish or more, this method is totally old news, but it’s a goodie.

Between the coffee bar, this vanity, our foyer chest, and our bedroom furniture, I’ve been on a wood furniture kick lately. What’s that about? It’s so strange to me how different my style is in this house compared to our last house that was all anything-and-everything-painted.

I think it’s the simplicity. No matter how many beautiful colors a piece can be painted, there’s just something about the natural elegance of wood, even if it is the pretend kind.

I’m starting to discover that I’m drifting some from the farmhouse vibe and throwing in more traditional styles. Not sure if it’s me getting older or just this new house that doesn’t seem to fit into that farmhouse category quite as easily. I’m just letting this place speak to me, and that’s the direction it’s telling me to go.

Once I photograph more of this sorta farmhouse, sorta city powder room, it’ll be in the books to post about next week!

If you’ve missed any of the progress so far, you can see this space’s transformation from the beginning in these previous posts:

• Powder Room Design Plan and Before Shot
• Vintage Green Bead Board
• Beginner’s Guide to Hanging Wallpaper
• Faux Marble Tile Floor

I cannot wait to share it with y’all! It’s like a little vacation every time I walk into our powder room now. I legitimately do a tiny victory dance every time I walk past it. And as pretty as it is, it’s mostly because I no longer have to climb stairs as often every day… or have a sink smack in the middle of the living room.

It’s the little things that bring the biggest joy, right?