Nursery Progress- I Heart Spray Paint - Pretty Real

Nursery Progress- I Heart Spray Paint

9:57 AM

Many of you are my facebook friends so if you pay any attention whatsoever to my status updates, you basically have a sneak preview into what I may be blogging about. Perhaps I'm being presumptuous and you don't read my status updates (Do you mean to tell me that reading about Genevieve's milestones isn't riveting?!) If not, the fact that I had all of last week off and primarily worked my butt (I want to say a$$ but my husband (and my Lord and Savior?) may frown upon it) off painting and cleaning with some Genevieve love and CHASING thrown in for good measure is news to you.

Well I promised to post some photos of the few projects I accomplished. My to-do list looked something like this:
To Do:
Paint samples in Genevieve's room (I'm trying to decide on the perfect shade of gray for her big girl room--more on that later).
Paint rocking chair for Genevieve's room
Make lantern mobile
Paint changing table
Paint magazine rack
Finish painting lamps
Do laundry
Clean [insert every room in the house here]
Paint frame for baby's initial
Paint side tables for living room
To Buy:
Dresser for new baby's room
Dresser for Genevieve's room
Paint for changing table
Paint for both girls' (wow, freaky to say girlS) room
Paint for dresser(s)


As if I could get all of this done in one week--and really 4 days because the 4th of July and the weekends on either end of the holiday were shot. On those days, I can't get rid of drop Genevieve off at daycare for a few hours to work and the idea of trying to paint with her around is pretty much ludicrous.

So I didn't get the entire list checked off but I did make considerable progress. One of the first things I did was to finish painting the magazine rack. I got this magazine rack off of the side of the road (yes I am one of those people). So that means it was FREE! I love FREE. It's totally worth the effort to spruce it up when there was no initial outlay of cash in the beginning! And to make me feel even better about my dumpster dive (ok it wasn't actually IN a dumpster), I saw a very similar one at a consignment shop for $25 a few short days later.


The other great thing about this project was that I have been very, very tempted to get a used Jenny Lind crib and paint it a bright fun color (as discussed here).  Painting this Jenny Lind style magazine rack would give me a tiny taste of what a crib painting project would entail.  The end result: hell no.  Sorry for the potty mouth today but seriously I need to get across how adamant I am that I just couldn't handle that project in 90 degree temps at 33 weeks preggers.  No matter how stinkin cute painted Jenny Linds are!!  So anyway, here is another before shot:


And a few cans of spray paint later:



A few more pictures for the full effect:





What a difference a bit of color makes huh?!  This project was fairly easy--if it wasn't for all the spindles (especially those little annoying ones in the middle!) I'd label it super easy.  I didn't sand it or prime it or anything.  I figured since I wasn't painting it white, priming wouldn't really afford me the convenience of using fewer coats anyway, and although priming is always a good idea, I think in this case it was totally worth skipping.  I did take the time to do an acrylic top coat.  I've learned from spray painting other things that scratches occur pretty easily if you don't do enough coats and/or use a top coat.  I've also learned to follow the recommendations for repeating coats.  I used both Krylon and Valspar for this job (not surprising, the Valspar was a bit better) and both had guidelines as far as waiting 10 minutes between coats but not longer than an hour.  If you wait longer than an hour, you have to wait 24 hours...I think this is because of the wrinkling that can occur when you're doing multiple coats.  (I've learned this the hard way also).  The main thing to remember about spray paint is the thinner the coats the better (even if that means you have to do a lot of coats) and to take your time.  One thing I've learned as I've gotten more into crafting, upcycling, etc, is that I don't take my time on anything.  Ever.  It's a really bad habit and rushing through something (especially at the tail end of a project) is really, well dumb! You can ruin hours of work, which I almost did by rushing to get it complete.  So there's my two cents on spray painting.  And here's a cost breakdown:


Cost:
Magazine rack: free
Spray paint: approximately $12 (2 cans of valspar, 1 can of krylon, 1 can of krylon top coat)
Total: $12


Stay tuned for my post about painting Genevieve's rocking chair...and the biggest project I accomplished, refinishing the changing table.


If you have any spray painting or refinishing tips, success, or horror stories, please share them!

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