Monday, October 21, 2013

Master Bedroom (In Progress): white lamps

Over the past few months I've neglected blogging, in large part because life was just very very busy. Also, I hate painting and 90% of my to-do list for the foreseeable future is painting, so I was procrastinating. Things have started to settle down a bit, so I'm hoping to get back on track.

One project I have been avoiding for months is the lamps in my bedroom.  They were previously emerald green, which didn't go well with the master bedroom.


 I thought I would spray paint them white.  Back in June (!) I started priming them.

It was a fiasco.  I had three consecutive cans of primer get clumpy.  Every time it happened I hand-sanded all the clumps off and started over again.  I didn't have a lot of large chunks of time, so it seemed like I was sanding and sanding and sanding and sanding in all  my free time.  Finally I in July I said enough of this and started spray painting it white.  The primer wasn't opaque enough, and after five coats of white you could still see the sanding marks and peeks of emerald green.

I said ugh, I will just go buy new lamps.  But these lamps are enormous (about 34 inches tall) and enormous lamps are expensive and so I kept giving them the side eye out on my patio and wishing someone would come and paint these damn lamps.  In the meantime, we kept stubbing our toes and lamenting the lack of ability to see our clothes in the dark.

This weekend I picked up the sandpaper again.  And sanded everything down again.  I started again with a fresh can of Rustoleum flat white primer. (The previous primers were Zinsser and Killz. Boo, hiss.)  I put on six fresh coats of non-clumpy primer.  These lamps have now received 16 coats of primer. I am so done with these lamps.  I skipped the white glossy paint and put the flat-primed lamps back in the room.



I kind of like the flat texture.  Even if I didn't like it I'm calling it good enough for the army and moving on to the next painting project.




  

2 comments:

  1. You are way more dedicated (stubborn?) than me. :-) But I do like them white.

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    Replies
    1. Ha! No, I'm just cheap. Lamps that size are really expensive, and it was much cheaper to buy another $5 can of spray primer and spend a few more hours of my time than find something else brand new.

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