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… when I moved into my current home a couple of years ago I had next to no furniture, I had sold or given away pretty much everything prior to another international move.
… a couple of trips to ikea, a couple of finds on random second hand websites and a kind colleague got me sorted out with the basics… but not always to my taste.
… but there is an easy solution – spray paint it – right?! The 80’s varnished pine wardrobe would be converted into something modern in no time. Many hours of sanding and several cans of spray paint later I had half a white wardrobe, which was assembled and carefully positioned in the corner as is. I will have to paint the rest if I ever want to use it anywhere else! Then it took me 2 days of scrubbing to remove the worst of the fine white paint that covered every room in the apartment – yes, it was winter, I had painted indoors! Lesson learnt 😦
… last weekend, the sun was out. It seemed about time to finally renovate the rusty old wooden school table I have been lugging around Europe for over a decade. Left behind by an ex-flatmate many years ago, it was too scruffy to sell, but always seemed like it had potential, so I never dumped it…
… off I went to the diy shop to buy paint, primer, tape and sandpaper. First I spent hours reading diy bloggers’ descriptions of spray painting, familiarised myself with technique, prepared myself to paint! I decided to be ambitious and jump on the dip-dyed bandwagon. So off I set: I sanded, sanded, cleaned, waited, primed, waited, it got dark, painted, waited over night, sanded some blotches, wiped down, waited, painted, waited, measured, taped, painted the accent colour, made a mess, waited overnight, sanded, painted, realised I had forgotten to wipe after sanding, waited, sanded, wiped, waited, painted and reassembled the table… it isn’t perfect, but it is a lot better than it was!
… and the lessons learnt from this small adventure? Spray painting takes forever and takes a ton of patience; spray painting in the dark gives disappointing results; you will always need more paint than you expect – I went back to the diy store 3x and painting outside makes such a difference 🙂
This looks so good!! I agree – spray painting inside is a bad idea. I did it in my parents’ porch, as a teen, and it took many bottles of nail polish remover to get the film off (it worked well, though). Recently I broke my rule and spray painted in an unfinished part of my basement and our luggage and cans got doused. But it is hard to give up on spray painting ALL winter!!! I have seen people create little spray painting booths for inside, which is smart.
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