Lessons In Spray Painting

You know how they always say to never spit into the wind? (Or was that something about a fan?)

Anyway, whatever it is, I must have failed that particular test in Life Lessons 101, because today I learned that the same principle also applies to spray-painting.

Among the batch of things I was spray-painting today were my most recent Thriftique store acquisitions...my $40 wicker porch chairs.

Chairs I wanted very much to have finished so that my porch wouldn't look like a Sanford and Son set I can use them while turning the kids loose in the front yard in the afternoons.

When I found them, they were in beautiful shape and sturdy, but one was yellow, the other a very faded color like natural wicker, one having apparently been exposed to more of the elements on the porch of their previous home.

The only thing I wasn't wild about was that they had a Southwestern style pattern woven into the backs of the seats. I figured that by painting them, somehow that would magically disappear, because clearly, keeping them a mismatched pair was not an option.

Lesson # 2: White spray paint does not a Southwestern pattern cover up (though the cushions I plan to make will).

However, it does cover lots of other things.

Because while spray painting everything white in the wind, although I managed to stay mostly out of the overspray, my spraying hand was not so lucky.

Somehow, quite without my knowledge, my entire right forearm became white.

Here is my hand after repeated washings and scrubbings. The white doorjamb in the background was included for comparison to show you just how white my hand still was.

It was very difficult to get that fine mist of white paint off my fingernails. If only I'd thought to dig out my French manicure set, I could have just peeled the stencils off and had a manicure in the process. I'm always a day late and a dollar short with these flashes of genius.

It wasn't until later that I noticed that the paint didn't actually paint the skin on my forearm, but all the super-fine hairs that I never really knew I had.

Which left me looking like I had dewy spiderwebs all over my arm. Or, maybe a little more like I had 80-year-old-man, bushy white-haired arms.

Each hair accumulated a LOT of spray paint.

I guess I got off pretty easy though, because had I not had the foresight to stay completely out of the mist, I might have ended up looking like this:

Well, except for the fact that she's super-skinny.

And has long strawberry-blonde dreds.

Okay, so I look nothing like her at all, but I'm telling you...my skin, at least, was well on the way to looking like hers.

Pasty FrumpMama.

*Ahem* Getting back to my painting, Lesson #3: You must come at wicker from every angle with a steady mist, because each of those little pieces of wicker that are woven together have four sides. If you don't cover them all, the previous color will show through.

Which leads to Lesson #4: However much paint you think a wicker project is going to take, it's really going to take 3 times more.

Which leads to Lesson #5: Listen to your mother.

My mom said that this project would take lots of spray paint, and she was right. (I suspect she speaks from experience, having spray-painted wicker herself somewhere along the line...)

I do get a sense of satisfaction in making something old new again with lots a bit of paint. Even with the wait time between coats and carpal tunnel symptoms in my spraying hand to show for it.

Which, of course, leads to Lesson #6: When the paint department person at WalMart suggests the little depressor gun for big spray painting projects, listen to their advice.

Your hands will get very, very tired depressing that teensy tiny little spray can button while holding a chunky aerosol can while trying to paint the wicker evenly with a continual mist in the wind, and you will end up making a special trip back there to get one for the next coat.

Trust me on this. This little baby was worth the $2.65 I paid for it.

Finally, Lesson #7: After spending an afternoon spray-painting a bunch of stuff you've been saving up to do all at once, you will begin to see strange sights.

Like Pirates of the Caribbean pirates in the laundry pile on my sofa.

I realize this photo is a tad blurry, but I kept looking away and looking back, and every. single. time. I saw pirates in the laundry.

In the same way that some folks see pictures in the clouds.

Is it just me? Nobody else sees the two pirates?

Tell me it's not just me.

It is?

Alllrightythen. In that case, nevermind. I think I may have inhaled too many paint fumes.

Yep, blame it all on the fumes.