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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 🙂