I prefer it when things go my way. I'm an analytical person residing in an artist's body. I have my moments of creative panache, but deep down I'm a very structured person. If I have a plan, come rain or come shine, I'll stick to it, by golly. Problems arise, however, when "the plan" doesn't cover all the variables. That's what happened last week as I began the refinishing and reupholstering process of the chair I bought a month ago. You will remember I posted details last week of the first phase of my "shabby to chic" chair project -- the refinishing of the wood. I took photos (above) of the lovely wood chair I had painted. It was a beautiful, satin black, and I mentioned in my blog post that I was looking forward to moving on to the reupholstering of the chair. I'll pick the story back up where I left off, but I'm warning you the story gets ugly...Back to a week ago: Yes sirree, I was feeling very accomplished and, dare I say, a little cocky about my first attempt at furniture refinishing. I had primed the wood and applied two coats of black satin paint on my beautiful chair. It looked charming and I couldn't wait to start on the reupholstering...
Several hours after the picture taking and the uploading of my blog post detailing the painting of the chair, I went outside to check on my handiwork and, much to my chagrin, I notice the black paint had started to bubble in several places on the chair. My calling as a fine furniture refinisher came crashing down around me. Apparently, I had neglected one of the elementary rules of furniture refinishing ... that of sanding. I had drawn the erroneous assumption that one either sanded or used primer. I thought one replaced the other as the first step. A lesson learned. It appears one must sand and prime to achieve the kind of finish one would capture from a professional job.
Well, this totally messed up my "plan" and my analytical self took a tailspin. I wanted this project to be packaged in a neat little box, instead it was turning into a nightmare. My precise plan and time-line for this chair's revamp was booted from here to Kansas. Dang! The only thing left to do was to strip all my applied paint and the old varnish and stain off the chair and start over. Humility is a hard pill to swallow.Saturday around 10am I started the dastardly deed of stripping all the wood on the chair. A little after 2pm, I was finished. Yes... it took that long. Horrible work. Horrible! Here's what the chair looked like after the first step of applying the paint and stain remover. In keeping with this spooky time of year, it looks like something one might see on Halloween night.
Applying the remover was the easy part. Clearing away all that gobbily-gook was the test. All of a sudden all the handsome curves and rounded corners that I had bragged about on this chair became my nemesis.After four long hours of back-breaking work, this is what I have to show for it. He's down to his bare little bones. No paint. No varnish. No stain. N'ked as a jay bird. All he needs now is a little sanding
