Second coat does the job

I'll admit to having some doubts about going with the cheaper rust-oleum paint vs something more expensive after getting a first coat on the crib. Thankfully a second coat helped even things out and things look a lot better now.

Feeling better about choosing the $7 paint instead of the $32 paint.

Even, consistent color after a second coat.

Still an obvious re-paint job, but definitely suitable for sealing. So if it stays warm this weekend I'll open up the garage and see how the clear lacquer looks out of the spray can. And there's always poly I can brush on if necessary. I can't wait to get some boards and put a desktop together!

Getting your feet wet

Priming the crib ended up helping with the final quality of my re-paint job, but getting the feet done was a little trickier. I ended up with a solution that took some of the difficulty out of it.

There was a lot of crouching and bending to get that paint on, and at some point I realized I still wasn't doing a great job. The feet had to come off to get their own coats. So I drilled four holes in a piece of scrap, screwed the feet in, and viola; four feet I could put anywhere to prime and paint.

Spray paint counts as primer if it's white.

That worked great for a least priming; paint was a different story. They weren't looking too hot with the big brush, so they got taken off and touched up with a smaller brush to get the details.

The kids were painting too this weekend, which gave me the idea.

I know the feet on a project like this aren't overly important. No one's going to be on their hands and knees to look at the tiny details but I'm anal. If I do something I like to do it well, and that kind of OCD is rearing it's ugly head during this project specifically for whatever reason. It'll help it look better in the long run at least.

furniture painting

Next up for the crib desk is paint. I was pretty dubious about this stage, since finish is pretty critical to getting these projects a thumbs up from the rest of the house, and there are plenty of tutorials out there about what can go wrong while re-painting furniture. And with one coat on things don't look perfect, but overall I'm pretty pleased with things thus far.

Hey, that looks really good in the can at least.

Whew. Not bad on the crib either.

Rust-oleum has a nice shade of royal blue in their latex, and at $7 it seems like a good start. I know, going cheap usually isn't a good way to guarantee a successful project but hopefully the early effort to sand and prime pays off by saving me some cash here. Working with latex was a learning experience; some spots went really well and look good right away, some look pretty shoddy and will obviously need more care in later coats.

That doesn't look too bad!

That, however, does.

I'm thinking at least three coats, so hopefully I can get one on over the weekend and another next week when I go in late. As long as I still have time to put together the wife's valentine's day card, which I was going to do today but the afternoon kind of got away from me...either way, that's got to get done in the next day or two. Then, a few days for a lacquer coat and we'll be ready to pick some boards and put a desktop together. Always looking forward to more woodworking.