How to Crackle a Vanity - Brown and Teal
Well I lost all of my previous posts due to some mean hackers out there! Oh well - nothing wrong with new beginnings 
I finally had it with my gross bathroom. I haven’t remodeled one thing since we moved into our house 2 years ago. I figured it was time to start but my cheap husband wouldn’t buy me a new vanity. I decided to try crackle our cheap oak vanity using brown and teal. I love the brown and teal color combination. Here is a step-by-step method of how I did it.
Supplies needed:
- Paint primer (eg. Kilz)
- Crackle - I purchased a small jar at Home Depot for about $15. This is in the paint section near the faux painting supplies.
- Paint - 2 different and contrasting colors. I used brown and teal.
- Polyurethane - a small jar is fine since you really don’t use that much. I used a semi-gloss finish.
- Paint brushes
- Sandpaper
1. Remove hardware and door cabinets.
2. Lightly sand to remove the shine and funk.
3. MOST IMPORTANT STEP SO DON’T SKIP IT …. PRIME! I used a primer that I had in the basement which was tinted with brown. Let the primer thoroughly dry (a few hours at least)
4. Put on 2 coats of the base color. This was teal in my example. Let each coat thoroughly dry.
5. Now its time to put on the crackle. Be generous with this stuff and work quick. It did seem to dry quick and get sort of sticky so work somewhat fast. Let this thoroughly dry as per the directions on the can.
6. After the crackle layer is completely dry apply your top paint color (brown in my example). This is the really cool part. I didn’t try to be perfect when I painted this layer. If some of the teal shown through that was fine. When the top paint layer starts to dry it crackles so that the underneath paint color shows through. Voila .. you now have an antiqued, crackled cabinet.
7. The next step is to polyurethane. I let the paint dry for 24 hours before I applied the polyurethane. The jar said to apply 2 coats but since this is a bathroom cabinet and I really don’t like a super shiny look I only applied 1 coat. If these were kitchen cabinets I would definitely apply 2 coats because my kitchen cabinets get so much more abuse.
Well that’s it. Please let me know if you have any additional suggestions. My next project is to crackle my kitchen cabinets.
