I was recently given the chance to try out a really fun new line of paint called Black Dog Salvage Furniture Paint. As you probably know, when it comes to paint, I don’t often stray away from my favorite inexpensive, basic paint because I find that most fancy specialty paints are usually not quite as good as they say they are, and in the end they’re not really worth the extra money or effort for me. I do love to try out different unique paints though every once in awhile, just for fun and to see what’s out there. I was really pleasantly surprised when Black Dog Salvage Paint really was just as good as it was cracked up to be!
In case you’re wondering, yes, the paint is inspired by the same Black Dog Salvage Company that you see on the show Salvage Dawgs. They’ve partnered up with Woodcraft to offer this high quality, super easy to use paint meant specifically for projects like restoring great vintage furniture pieces beautifully and quickly.
I was considering taking a trip to my local ReStore to find something fun to refinish with this paint, but then I remembered that my friend and neighbor, Sarah from The Project Pile has a whole long list of things that she’s been meaning to refinish that she’s picked up over the years. So I thought, why not help her out with that and get some extra help with the painting too? 🙂 Yes, she really does have a giant pile of projects that she’s trying to get to in her garage. It’s pretty spectacular, actually.
We decided to refinish this outdated wine rack because we really liked the shape and the construction of it, and thought it was kind of a shame that it was that golden oak color that makes it instantly look old and neglected.
We set up on Sarah’s beautiful, gigantic front porch so we could work in the shade and get all those nice cool breezes coming in off the fields.
Here’s what the Black Dog Salvage Furniture Paint packaging looks like.
The small, colored jars are some of the sample colors from the sample kit that they sent me. I love the Black Dog Salvage packaging, but I really really love the funny names of a lot of the colors. It really does make painting more fun. 🙂
My favorite paint name is “That’s gonna leave a mark” for this nice medium purple color.
One of the great features about this paint is that it’s really easy to mix, and they actually encourage you to get creative and mix your own colors! So of course, we did just that!
For this project, we used “Black Dog” and “Clean Canvas”, both in the “Pint Plus” size, and we had way more than enough paint to finish the wine rack, inside and out. Because this paint takes only one coat to cover, you end up using a lot less paint than what you might be used to.
We gathered everything together first, then we got to it!
We added about equal parts of Black Dog and Clean Canvas, and then mixed in a little bit of a brown color called “Dirt” to warm up our color a bit.
We mixed the color in an old tupperware container so we could cover it up and save this color for future use when we were done.
When you’re mixing your own paint, it’s really important to mix a really big batch because it will be almost impossible to replicate that same color if you run out halfway through your project!
The next thing we did was paint!
Another wonderfully-amazing feature of this paint is that there’s no prep work needed! All we did was give the wine rack a quick wipe-down, but no sanding or stripping is needed. So no matter what kind of finish you’re going over, you can just get right to painting and this paint will stick to it!
OK, it was maybe more like 30 minutes to get it all painted inside and out. But still, that’s pretty amazing, especially when you consider that we only had to do one coat, so we really were completely finished!
I can’t tell you how exciting and liberating the idea of painting something in just one coat is for me! 🙂
The paint also dries amazingly quickly, so we were able to test it out almost right away and see how it would look with some bottles inside and some fun flowers on top!
I think it turned out so beautifully and it’s going to look amazing in Sarah’s kitchen!
You know I just love my grey paint! Colors always seem to pop so nicely when you have the perfect shade of grey to pair with them. I think the velvetty matte finish of this Black Dog Salvage Furniture Paint really enhances the color of the paint too.
I don’t think I’ll ever get over the magic of paint! It’s amazing how it can update almost anything so quickly and easily!
If you’ve got some pieces that need updating, and you want to do it quickly and have really beautiful results, I’d definitely suggest Black Dog Salvage Furniture Paint!
Actually, Chris was working on a little project recently and was having a little trouble with getting the finish to look decent. I had him use this paint finally after he’d tried a few other things that he wasn’t happy with and he loved it. I think it pained him a little to admit that I was right, but I think we’ll both definitely be using this paint more often now, especially for tricky jobs!
Do you have any furniture pieces that you’ve been wanting to update with paint?
I was compensated for my time spent working on this post, but all thoughts and opinions are 100% mine as always!
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.