Painting and Distressing a wooden chair

I got this captain's chair at Goodwill for $7.  It's somewhat old, not sure how old, but very sturdy and in excellent condition.  I felt like it needed a makeover, so I decided to paint and distress it.  Here's what it looked like before:

So, first I sanded it down.  Then I painted on Benjamin Moore "Ben" semi-gloss paint (because I like a little sheen, it looks older to me) in the color Ocean Air, which is a very light blue-green, so light it almost looks white.

It dried so fast, by the time I was done with one coat it was dry (I did two, but the second was very light.)  After 10 minutes the whole thing was dry!  Then I took sand paper and distressed the edges- basically everywhere you would see paint worn off on an actually old chair.

I decided to give it a little something special with my gold paint and stencil.

Let me tell you, friends, you better have a lot of sandpaper when you go to do a project like this.  Distressing was back-breaking work!  Maybe I painted it TOO well..haha.  Anyway, it ended up looking FABULOUS.  Totally worth the thumb blister.  As you can see below, it feels right at home as our computer/desk chair. :)