Black Distressed Kitchen Island

Finished Kitchen Island

My services were recently requested by Scott from http://www.aurorabuildinggroup.com/. His company was doing a total kitchen remodel for his client. They had beautiful, new cherry cabinets installed and a huge new kitchen island. She wanted the island to be black and very heavily distressed, with the wood tone showing through the same as the existing cabinets. I got to start with all natural, unfinished wood. That never happens! It's always, old and dirty and in bad shape. What a joy!

I decided to use a product that stains and seals in one step. I used Bombay Mahogany to mimic the stain color of the new cabinets.

Even though it was oil, it did slightly raise the grain of the wood enough that it needed a light sanding when dry. I was going to use my usual awesome bonding primer/basecoat but I knew with the amount of distressing she wanted it would be difficult to remove so I needed something to allow me to easily chip away the paint. I went old school and used a wax candle. I rubbed it randomly over the cabinets, being sure to hit the natural high points of the cabinetry.

I used my trusty black bonding paint, only available online, and began to paint. It has great coverage and great bonding capabilities so I had to make sure it didn't dry too long.

Once they were dry to the touch, I used a plastic scrubbing pad to remove the paint, reveling a distressed, aged look.

The paint rubbed away perfectly, giving a naturally distressed look! The finished cabinet door.

The black paint needed to be sealed when finished. We didn't want a shiny finish, so I mixed a water based satin varnish with a flat varnish, at about a 1:1 ratio, so that the cabinets would still look old. Here's another  shot.

You can see some of my existing work at http://www.paintingthetown.us/cabinets_furniture.shtml or keep up with my new projects at http://www.houzz.com/pro/paintingthetownus/painting-the-town-inc.