Well, I've had my first minor misstep in this process but it was more of a lesson than a mistake. Sometimes with all my planning I forget to give myself room to make creative decisions along the way. After painting the walls yesterday I found I needed to rethink some of my other plans. Even though I chose a pretty warm gray, gray by its nature is still a cool color. When I woke up this morning, under the natural early morning light, it almost looked like a smoky blue-violet. Now, not at all. Even so, certain colors I definitely wanted to use are now out of the question except in small amounts.
Sooooo I was pretty pleased with myself after doing the walls. I'm planning to do the big dresser over Christmas but was kind of jonesing for something else in the meantime. Decided to use my second day off working on the bedside table. Started out with a pretty definite plan. I wanted the main part of the table to be dark indigo and the drawers mustard yellow with dark stenciling. Headed to Home Depot and bought some Behr "Night Watch" and a sample size of Glidden "Mustard Seed." By the way, those sample quantities are fantastic. It was a really generous little jar of paint for about $3 which is perfect when you don't need a whole quart. While I was in the area, I stopped by Gas Lamp Antiques to look for dark finishing wax. The wax was something I intended to use on the dresser and I had been researching how to use it online. The brand I kept seeing was Annie Sloan along with a line of chalk paint. The problem: a can of her wax is about $50 and you're supposed to buy the Clear along with the Dark. Insane. Gas Lamp had one made by Howard that their vendors use and it only costs $16.
I went home and started painting. First of all, that stupid dresser looks so much better with
any paint on it. It couldn't have been much worse to start with. The old stencils were so gross and tasteless and the thing just looked dirty. The indigo paint seemed lighter/brighter than the color on the card though but whatever. I painted the drawers yellow and, after they dried, started stenciling. We had a stray can of paint I was going to use in a dark olive (nearly black.) Two things happened at this point. Because stenciling requires vapor-thin layers, the dark color layered over the yellow looked almost like a baby-puke color. When I removed the stencil I discovered the paint had tried to separate. The pigment had pretty much stayed where it was supposed to but there was an oily bleed through that almost resembled a watermark. Ugh.
It was disappointing. The indigo looked more like a darkish royal blue and the stenciling was pukey and sloppy. At one point I actually thought about just trashing it. Instead I started by repainting the yellow (so now there are about 5 coats on the drawers) and set them aside until I could think it through. I decided now was as good a time as any to experiment with the wax. I waxed the main body of the dresser and it gave it a nice luster and tempered some of the brightness. I decided not to use either that disgusting paint (obvious) or the stencils. I have some blue painter's tape and I have some ideas for a third color-- and I'll go from there.
I think it will turn out fine in the end but it won't really resemble the original plan at all. It's okay. I think that's just how creativity should work sometimes. Scrapping some of what I had already done was the right decision. Planning to take a few days to think about what I'll do on those drawers then I'll kick off my Christmas weekend with some fun finishing... And then the big mama project begins.
Again, color drama. I used Valspar "Cherry Divine." I wanted a bright red with a tiny bit of pinky-ness to it. What I ended up with was more like Sleeping Beauty pink. While I was working on the dresser, I really wished I had had a paint sprayer. That would have been super-nice. I started thinking after a while that my paint brushes could have been better quality. It was not unlike painting with a broom. Enough complaining... for now.
