Okay – it’s Thursday. I knew that just checking to make sure
everyone else knows too. However, these
days I find I have a little trouble keeping up with the name of the day since,
for me, they mostly are all the same.
May has really just zipped
past. Odd, since March and April seemed
to crawl. Guess I’m getting used to isolation
(ugh).
Summer is here in my part of
Texas. Temperatures in the 90’s with 80%
humidity and the nights only cooling down to the 70’s. Ugh.
Still, could be worse - this could be March with the same
temperatures.
I finally started a new
project. It has been on the list of “Things
I Need to Do before I Die” for --- hummmmm --- 20-ish years. Long years back, I decided to paint (young –
I was really young) a lovely antique highboy dresser I got from my
grandmother. My two daughters were very
little people and I planned to put it in their room which was painted blue and
green. So, I painted the dresser blue
with green drawers. And, after they were
older and not in need of the dresser, I decided to strip the paint off and
return it to its previous state.
Okay, here's the thing - I really don’t like to
strip furniture. It’s a mega-ton of
work. It’s messy. It’s time consuming. You have to have a good place to do it where
cats and/or dogs won’t wander through all the gunky stuff. You have to sand everything down. Then, restain. So, I got lazy. I decided to try one of those shabby chic
kits and painted it again. Turned out AWFUL! And, since that time, I have promised myself
every year to strip it back to the wood.
When the whole self-isolation
thing became real, I decided to get the thing done. Another reason I don’t enjoy stripping
furniture is that you can’t trust what it says on the bottle. The one I bought said, right on the container, in big letters – STRIPS
5 LAYERS OF PAINT AWAY IN 10 MINUTES!
No. Not in 10 minutes or 3 hours. Ugh! Not
with serious application of strength and paint scraper. Ugh!
Bought something else. Painted it on, waited an hour and it worked
pretty well. The instructions said it
would work overnight too, so, I painted on the stripper, covered it with
plastic . . . and . . . . . off came the paint this morning, easy-peasy.
Still have the main part of
the dresser to do but I’m thinking it’ll be done by next week. I’ll put up a picture of the ‘after’ later.
A good friend of mine (she
lives in Austin) sent me a 'funny' the other day. Seems the staff/owners of a local restaurant
there have a sense of humor about the current state of the virus isolation -
Ok, that’s all I got.
21 May 2020
I feel like May has gone really fast too. Stripping and restaining furniture is a big job -- good for you for taking it on!
ReplyDeleteThose signs made me laugh. I've been thinking that same thing. Where the heck is Morgan Freeman and why isn't he narrirating this shit?
ReplyDeleteMaybe a little faster.
ReplyDeleteWe had a couple of shops that stripped furniture, which I repainted for my daughters. Great vats of goop the dunked the piece in and hosed off when it came out. I wonder how many years those guys lived.
I always think I want to work on furniture like that, but it turns out that I am lazy. I did reupholster a chair once and boy was THAT a lot of work!
ReplyDeleteI haven't stripped wood furniture in decades! It is a most difficult job, for sure.
ReplyDeleteYes, May has flown, strangely enough. What's up with THAT? Those signs gave me a great laugh, so thanks for that!