Picardy Project

building shit & raising girls

  • Home
  • About
  • Picardy
  • Project Gallery
  • Locals
  • Brands & Tools
  • Contact
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter

18 Coats of Paint

March 7, 2016

First off: I realize that now we have a ton of projects that will be happening, and not nearly the equivalent time to blog. As a result I’ll probably be behind the next couple of weeks (maybe even months). I’d really like to commit to blogging 3 times a week, but even that frequency probably won’t be able to keep me completely up to date with what’s going on. So, please be patient πŸ™‚ I’ll be filling you in on all the happenings as we move along, but just because life is, well, life, it will take me a little while to keep you up to date. I have to say I’m excited to have so much work to blog about again πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

Alright, now let’s get down to business.

This is a short story about 18 coats of paint. Thankfully it’s not 1 project, but 3. The first project? These bookcases

IMG_20160215_192556076

We got these bookcases from my step dad (frequently called CBH here on this ol’ blog) because he just sold the house he and my mom lived in. And a quick side note – you may be wondering why I refer to it as HIM selling the house THEY used to live in. Well, about 4 years ago they separated. And then recently they got divorced. Yes, very sad. I was very sad. But, the good news about my family is that we are very weird – my mom and dad still get along great, and my mom and step dad still get along great. We are a very successfully divorced family. And I LOVE that. My mom and Zoe frequently have breakfast dates with CBH when my mom watches her and I still see him a lot. Technically speaking I guess he is not actually my “step dad” anymore – but my mom and he got together when I was so young that he will always be my step dad. And his son will always be my step brother. They’re family. And they are another uncle and grandpa to my girls. That’s just how we roll.

Okay? πŸ™‚ Moving on.

So we inherited this bookcase from my step dad when he was getting rid of some of the furniture he and my mom used to have. This is actually one in a pair, and I thought they would be perfect for Zoe’s new room. The only kicker was that I wasn’t too much of a fan of the super yellow pine. I wanted to give it a little bit of a makeover. Painting it crisp white with a bright, fun color in the back I thought would jazz it up just right. The only thing was this took A LOT of paint. 10 coats in all. Not ALL OVER, but 10 different coats.

It started with 4 coats of primer

IMG_20160215_193428031

I honestly should have used a better stain blocking primer and I could have gotten away with maybe one less coat. The Glidden primer wasn’t good at blocking the knots and yellow finish to the wood

IMG_20160215_200750245

But after 4 coats I was done. And I moved on to the color coat.

I used Benjamin Moore Advance. Chris did a really good paint test for what the best interior, semi-gloss, white trim paint (still need to finalize that post…) and I followed the advice of that test for what the best paint to use was – it covered well, and held up to scratching (and Zoe will probably beat this to shit).

I got started

IMG_20160222_141138371

The good thing was that this only took 2 coats of paint, yay!

Then I moved on to the color in the back. One time a couple weeks ago when we were at HD I picked out a couple BRIGHT colors that I could recall were in her fabric and held up the 3 swatches for Zoe and let her pick the color she wanted. She picked Ralph Lauren Racer Pink (I got it color matched in Glidden). The thing about reds and deep pinks like this is it really takes a couple coats for good coverage. I haven’t found that the paint/primer in one really helps. So it took 4 coats of this paint to really give it a good, even coverage

IMG_20160223_081022073

The good news is that after the TEN coats of paint (4 primer, 2 color coats, 4 pink coats on the back), it was finally done

IMG_20160225_173104119

And I actually love it. I’m not a super big pink fan myself, but I do actually really love the bold, bright and saturated color. Good pick Zoe πŸ™‚

The next 5 coats of paint? The mirror.

Zoe loves a mirror that my mom had in her apartment.Β My mom is currently living in Croatia. Yes, Croatia. She took off on some European travels a few years ago and fell in love with the country. She’s been back several times and recently decided that she wanted to spend 50% of her time living over there. So that’s what she does now πŸ™‚ In the process of making that decision she pared down her life a lot and got rid of a lot of furniture (she’ll live a couple months of the time here in the Bay Area and then go down to San Diego and live with my brother and his wife a couple of weeks a year as well). Yes, she is a fabulous gypsy πŸ™‚ One of the things she was getting rid of was this giant mirror that Zoe took a particular liking to when my mom had it propped up on the ground

IMG_0027_2

I had wanted a mirror in her room and my mom asked if I wanted this one. Perfect. I thought a new paint job would spruce it up well. And because I liked that bright pop of Racer Pink so much with the bookcases I thought it would be perfect for the mirror as well.

I probably could have saved myself maybe ONE coat if I had used primer. But I didn’t. So covering up the blue took 5, even coats

IMG_20160301_152447013

But that is pretty pretty, right?

That’s 15 coats right there. Where’s the other 3? Zoe’s light fixture.

I went off to hunt for something to repurpose several weeks ago. I found this crazy light

IMG_20160208_125836400_HDR

Yes, I know, it looks a little insane. But I like that it was a little different. And I thought painting it a bright color and switching out this glass dangles would make it work. I want Zoe’s room to be FUN, and this light made me think of that.

So when we went to the hardware store a couple weeks ago I did the same thing – I picked a couple cans of a bright color of spray paint and she picked Plum.Β We taped off the light and hung it in the garage ready for painting. Zoe was very interested in the process so we actually let her paint some. Spray paint is obviously not good to inhale, so we just let her spray a couple of bursts.Β Then we went outside and let Chris paint it all. And 3 coats later it was done. I of course forgot to take a picture of it πŸ™‚Β I still need to hang the new wire and dangles, but I’ll get to that later this week. Hopefully.

There you have it: 10 coats on the bookcases, 5 on the mirror, and 3 on the light. Obviously we’re playing a lot of painting catch up for the lack of work we’ve been doing the last several years πŸ™‚

« SF: Not Quite Done, but Picture Worthy
It’s Time to Demo Some Shit »

Comments

  1. Lesley says

    March 7, 2016 at 11:07 AM

    What are you replacing the glass dangles with? Those ones are sorta cool–they look like giant paper clips!

    • meryl rose says

      March 7, 2016 at 11:11 AM

      Aren’t they!? I’m replacing them with purple wire and little jewelies – isn’t that such a professional name? Lol. I would have left the original dangles, but about 1/2 were missing, and they were SO FRAGILE – two more broke on the way home. I was nervous that if somehow Zoe hit one (tossing something in the air or something), it would fall and break all over the ground. No bueno. So I tried to think of a fun alternate way to jazz it up.

  2. Sharon says

    March 7, 2016 at 9:05 PM

    I think if you shellac over knots before painting, it helps prevent bleed-thru.

    • meryl rose says

      March 8, 2016 at 5:53 AM

      Oh yes, it definitely does, this was just a case of my absolute supreme laziness at not wanting to go to the garage to get the correct primer because I had a 5 gallon bucket of cheap stuff already in the house πŸ™‚ Which is just ridiculous of me because obviously the 85 seconds it would have taken me to get the CORRECT primer would have been faster than the (at least) one extra coat I had to do. If I had used shellac or our stain blocking primer I might have only had to use 2 coats.

Oh, hello there. We're Chris and Meryl and we're renovating home in Oakland, CA. Chris is the handy, knowledgeable builder and I'm his slightly inappropriate assistant. We've got 2 helpers - Zoe is 2 and Merritt arrived in June of 2015. Spurred by our love of renovating our own home we started a handyman, design and organizing business and now that we're both self employed we're busier than ever, but we love it!

Follow Picardy by Email!

Archives

Follow Us

https://www.facebook.com/PicardyProject/

Categories

Search

Instagram

© 2023 · Site design by Sweet Theory Designs · Built on the Genesis Framework