HGTV Lied to Me.

I talked about the need to spray paint furniture to get what I want and to fit into my "design vision" for the living room. And now I am. It is however, not as easy, fun or rewarding as the home improvement shows say it is. It is not easy! It is hard!  even a little job! Who knew that spraying paint in a general direction would be so taxing! and messy! and maddening and ultimately, soul crushing?  They never show the soul crushing part on HGTV. Liars.

Spray painting isn't hard! It seems easy enough, press the nozzle, point the can in the correct direction and away you go to instantly transform that ugly piece of furniture into a designer gem!  They make it look like you can just do this and have it  perfect. They lie! Its messy as hell - and I even bought a widget to prevent the messy transfer of paint to fingers and I still ended up with hot pink hands that could only be removed through repeated scrubbing with soap and boiling water and multiple applications of skin destroying turpentine -  a step they never show on TV. They show the homeowner picking up the paint can, shaking it a little and in the next scene they have a happy homeowner basking in a job well done and a work area full of glossy cabinet doors/living room furniture/bedroom set.

LIES. DO you know what they really have? Misery! feelings of failure, dripping paint, streaks, uneven coverage, splotchiness, too heavy/light sections and lungs full of spray paint. It is really not very fulfilling at all. Its actually demoralizing! How hard can this be? Its spray paint! Vandals do all kinds of  high quality work with this shit and don't go through life with green hands or uneven coverage. Am I too old to use spray paint?!

Some time after Spraypocolips, I went back to the scene of the crime to see if it was really as bad as it seemed at the time. It turns out I have an excellent memory for failure! It was just as bad as I remembered, and now with a chance to fully dry, its even more awful than it appeared before! Wheeee!

Now I know why we pay people do do this kind of work for us and why we buy new furniture when we buy furniture. Because it isn't "close enough" or ""okay" or  "Well..."!  Its new and pretty and doesn't have a "good side" yet. Its all GOOD SIDE! This is what we are paying for,  360 degrees of GOOD SIDE!

This is where we started. Pretty much 360 degrees of good side.

Right size, wrong color. Its not been of much use since I got it years ago, it was a cheapo I picked up at the flea market and has pretty much lived up to expectations. But now, I do need it and I'm calling it in from the bench. But first it needs to get into uniform.

Prior to painting it I followed the steps. I washed it down, let it dry and then gave it a light, all over sand to roughen up the finish and allow it to accept paint, I cleaned it again as per directions. To make sure this was a job well done, I bought the tools to do this project correctly

And in the right hands, they would have been the right tools but  they were in my hands so they may as well have been rocks and twigs for all the "right job" I did with them.

I liked it! I was very high!

Sure, I saw some drips - I have sponge brushes I could have corrected some of the issues with when it was still wet, but for some reason I didn't think about them as possibilities because I used spray paint and spray paint is different! Dripping paint is dripping paint! Idiot.

It would also have helped to have more light on the project, lots of bright light is key to almost any DIY project and I was working with "light".  Idiot.

I left the table to dry and started the process of rubbing the skin of my hands, removing the caked on paint with soap and water - I forgot I had turpentine until my new lobster claws were almost free of paint. Idiot.

Monday night I returned to the scene of the crime and it is a crime against furniture.It looked better when I did  it and it didn't look great then. I sanded down the rough spots and made an attempt to even out the base coat for the next coat.

When I do the repainting, I'm going try to do it outside in the sunshine. I may have to wait until spring, but at least if I can see what I'm doing, I might be able to see my way to a better outcome and the next time I have to paint something, I'm using real paint and real brushes. Damn it.