I have a very old (well, antique) dresser which has been handed down in my family. Well, not handed down too far, but still, it has been handed down. Mom and Dad bought it for my sister, Jodi, when she was an infant. After Jodi died, it became mine. Then, when Jamie was born - it was still mine. But now that I have a bigger dresser, it's his.
When the dresser was originally bought, it was a beautiful natural oak. Dad, in his drunken wisdom, decided to paint it white. Without putting any protective coating on the wood first (so all the paint soaked way down deep in the wood). So it pretty much has to be painted from now on. Jamie's room is supposed to be decorated in mostly black and tan, with a travel theme (which has really turned more into a sea-faring theme). So, I decided to paint the dresser a nice, glossy black to match the bookcase in his room.
I borrowed a palm electric sander from my friend Karen from church. I had to sand off a lot of the old paint in order to roughen the surface for the new paint to stick (at least, that's what I was told to do, so I did it). Well, my house was pretty messy anyway - think of what the house in "Overboard" looked like when Goldie Hawn first moved in, and that's about 20% better than my house looks now! So, I fired up the sander and used it right in the middle of my living room. That was Friday night.
Saturday, we went down to Dad's to spend the night and then visit with him some today for Father's Day. So I didn't get to work on my messy house or my funky dresser. But I did do some major scrubbing on Dad's house. Eeeewwwww! Totally gross looking everywhere. Dad's house stays "straight" so far as nothing lying around on the floor, but it's dirtier than mine. The toilet was, I kid you not, black from all the gunk growing in the bowl. I won't even mention what kind of crusties I had to scrub off the outside of it! Then I tackled his shower. It was so disgusting I was gagging while I cleaned it. My house may be messy, but it is never this dirty! But enough about Dad's grossness - I just ate and the memory of it makes me want to hurl.
So, anyway, we come home today, and it was so hot I cranked the A/C down to about 68, turned a fan full-blast on my bed, and laid down for a while. Then, I got up and decided it was time to finish that dresser and get it out of the middle of my living room. So I tacked up a plastic drop cloth on the back porch (which made the birds nesting out there REALLY angry), and dragged the dresser out there. Then I started spray painting it. Then I went in the house to let it dry before I applied the second coat. I didn't realize it, but I had black paint all over the bottom of my socks. So now my living room also matches Jamie's room, as my beige carpet has black tracks across it.
Any suggestions on how to remove black paint without removing the color of the carpet, too?
Stinkbumps the Wonder Boy: The rants, ravings and ramblings of a lunatic, overachieving single mom.
6 comments:
Assuming the paint is latex, let it dry completely, then use a utility knife to scrape the paint of the edges of the fibers. Sort of like getting gum out one's hair, but without the peanut butter.
Next time, paint barefoot--that way, you'll know if you've stepped in paint, and can clean your feet before tracking it all over.
Luckily, it wasn't really paint. It was merely the paint "dust" left over when the tiny paint particles dried and collected on the plastic tarp I was using. So my carpet no longer has clear outlines of my socked and bare feet (although, I gotta say, I've got some cute bare footprints! LOL)
So, how did the spray painting turn out? Did it look pretty good?
It looks really good - on some parts of it. Some sections will need another coat of paint, but Jamie really needs to use his dresser now, so I went ahead and put it in his room. We'll paint it again after we move again in March.
you're moving in march? where? another apartment, or another city?
As much as I would LOVE to say I'm moving not only to another city but another state, alas, God hasn't shown me yet where I'll be. But I do know that, based on my skewed "12 days of Christmas" experience the other night, the minute my lease is up, I'm out of here. I'm hoping to be able to get us either a little house rental or a townhouse/duplex to rent. As I said before, I don't want to buy anything because I don't want to have anything tying me here. However, if I did buy something, then I could sell it and make a profit on it. Hmmm....we'll see what happens.
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