We have been preparing for the holidays and Ansley's arrival which of course means cleaning and painting and more cleaning and more painting. Buck and I decided that to save some money we would use Mayce's crib and hutch for Ansley's room and although this idea was great in theory as with everything we try to accomplish it has turned into much, much more. Now I will admit that a large part of the problem is that my tastes have changed since Mayce and I no longer wanted the cherry furniture I wanted black. It was here that the troubles began...
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Buck thought it best to take the high road and sand down the furniture before painting (now keep in mind neither of us have ever sanded anything). Needless to say we had NO idea how long it would take nor the sheer volume of laquer and paint that was on the furniture. We thought that this portion of the project would take a weekend...it took a month. I must say however that the results were stunning and I was amazed at the "bones" of the furniture, the grain was beautiful and I was almost sad to paint it black, almost.
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Then last weekend Julia came over and helped me paint furniture while Buck painted the room. Sounds like a great plan right? Well it was until we ran out of paint and had to go and get more mixed. Even this was fine until we knocked over half of the new can on the garage floor leaving us with barely enough to cover those remaining pieces. Still we got them covered so we were doing alright, right? Well no, you see the next step was to varnish the furniture and seeing as we had recently painted Mayce's dresser and there are visible brushstrokes I called the dads to see if I could use a roller. "Sure", "Fine", "No problem", were the given responses. So Julia and I got to stepping on the varnish and wondered about the tiny bubbles that were on the surfaces of the furniture but they would go away right? NOPE!!!
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So this week Buck had to resand the furniture and this weekend what did I do? Oh thats right I painted it...again. But hold on the story doesn't end there. On Thursday I had gone to get more paint because remember we spilled half of what we bought last weekend. When I was there previously the gentleman told me that it was simply a flat black so that is what I asked for when I went back. Because black is black right? WRONG!!! So Friday night I crack open the new can of paint and look at it thinking "Hmm this looks rather gray but then again so did the other it will be fine". I went along painting and painting all the time thinking "This is not getting as dark as it should but perhaps it is just me." Well yesterday morning I woke up and checked the furniture to see if it had darkened overnight. It was then that I got the bright idea to varnish it because the paint changes when varnished. Just to let you know it didn't change it was CHARCOAL GRAY!!!!
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See now you are beginning to understand my pain! So back to the store we went this time taking the orginal "black" paint to be matched and yesterday I spent the entire day repainting what I had repainted after painting it last weekend. I told Buck if we ever do have another baby or if I decide that I want to change the color of any of the existing furniture in the house that we will be purchasing not painting.
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Oh and as a side note Buck came into the room the other night and seriously informed me that he had been thinking about it and just wanted me to know that if anything should ever happen to him that he would want me to remarry. I slowly said ok and asked what he was talking about and if he was feeling alright. It was then he looked at me with a knowing grin and said "If I had to suggest anyone I would say Sherwin Williams or the Dutch Boy."
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Psst!! - Pictures of the finished room should be up within the week...I hope!
