Painted Faux Granite Counter Tops {With DIY Chalk Paint}

My mother has been ranting and raving and hootin' and hollerin' and bee poppin' and scattin' all over about how awesome and amazing her chalk painted counter tops look and have held up.  I asked her to write out what she did, so consider this a guest blog post from my Iowan Mama. I copy/pasted what she typed up in an email to me.  Hope you can follow along!

"Okay Kammy, I am not sure if you were the one to come up with the idea of painting a countertop or what... but I do remember thinking.. you sure do need to do something about your peach colored countertops...whoaaaa!  Anyhoo...on a much-looked-forward -to trip to visit my grandkids and S-I-L and daughter Kammy, we  decided to give it a try. She chose gray as the main color since her cabinets were painted white on the tops and black on the bottoms. After seeing the beautiful transformation that resulted I thought 'o.k ,you need to do this.'   So, I had a friend from the Soo(canada) visiting and with her guidance, we tackled it.. I mean painted it! I first went with the taupe colors as my kitchen was painted Light sage green.  I had three shades of Rustoleum Countertop Paint mixed - Haystack, Wheat, and Earth. From the three colors that I purchased I mixed a small bit from two of them to create a fourth and fifth shade.  I used plastic bags and 'blotted" the colors on.  For the finishing touch I brushed on Poly Acrylic to seal it. Well, a few years have passed and I was very happy with my countertops. But this spring I decided to paint my kitchen a soft butter yellow. The taupey colored countertops clashed with the new wall color... soooo, I pulled out the left-over Rustoleum countertop paint to see if I could do darker shades of browns. Well, when I pulled out the plastic bag to start adding a dark brown , the original paint literally came off on the bag! OH,Boy ,.. what am I going to do now? I was determined to do this project so I thought about past blogs that I had read. There were those who were making their own 'chalk-board paint and painting that on their countertops and they were very happy with the results. Sooo, what do I have to lose...So I had just purchased a black mistint from Wal-mart (how could you have a black mistint?) and I had also just purchased a nice exterior brown color from Sherwin Williams, (a mistint as well) and I also had a bricky-red color leftover from another room. I mixed  approximately two  tablespoons of Webpatch* with 1 cup of the dark brown; I also mixed up about 1/2 Cup of the rust color with Webpatch and 1/2 Cup of with the black paint. This time I used a scruffy two-inch paint brush and "pounced" each color on.  I "pounced" into each color while they were still wet so that they would blend a little bit.  I brushed on a poly urethane varnish this time as I didn't feel the poly acrylic that I had used before held up to the washing. I sanded between each coat of polyU. to give a smoother finish. Layering on paint does add texture to your countertop.  I did three coats of Poly U. I am very pleased with the finished look. It has a much richer look with the darker tones. I figure have less than $10.00  invested in the redo. My first investment was a whopping $60.00. and I didn't even use 1/2 of the Rustoleum paint. Several of my friends even painted their countertops using the left over paint and there is still some left! Someday, if I decide to redo my kitchen again, I won't hesitate to repaint the countertops to coordinate. Hope this is helpful to anyone wanting to save some megabucks."

*Webpatch is similar to Plaster of Paris.

Yes, I am quite envious of my mother's spacious kitchen!

Here's a look at it stepping back:

{She also painted her island and the bottom of her stools black}

And how about a look at what they were before??

(And a peek at my pretty mom!)

First paint job

If you were reading along, you would have read that she painted them one other time using the Rustoleum Counter Top Coating.  She used several different colors and it was on for two years and still looked as good as new!  You can read about and see how that one looked HERE.

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