How do you distress wood to give a white/beachy finish?
You can do “physical distressing” by hitting with various sorts of hardware — awls, nails, chains, keys, mallets that look like medieval torture instruments, etc. These create gouges, dents, and chips. It’s quite easy to over do this, so go lightly. You can also do “finish distressing.” There are various ways to do this, used alone or in combination: – sand through edges and areas common to wear points, through the paint down to a lower level of paint or stained finish. – layer different colors of paint and expose lower layers – apply wax to areas before finishing and flake off the paint that didn’t adhere, once it’s cured – apply heat to blister and char the paint – apply a glaze to “dirty up” the paint. Allow it especially to stay in the carved and molded details and concave areas of joints. – use a “crackle finish” that is typically two products that are incompatible and cause the top coat to move differently than lower coats and thus split and crackle. You can buy specific product
