things I learned or remembered about painting this week...

Dogs don't understand wet paint signs. Mojo has a blue ear and the tip of his tail is white, and Abe has new white patches on his side. I. HATE. Taping. I also HATE pulling down the tape. No matter what color white paint you have, it doesn't match any ceiling in any room in your house. Unless of course you don't get paint (or the previous tenants didn't) on the ceiling. Door frames in a corner suck. Dogs make good drop cloths. (I neglected to move the drop cloth to where I was painting, but Moj walked past me just as I dripped paint, so he saved our hideous carpet.) I have to start with white walls. Any other color, light or not, will change the color of the new paint. Painting sucks, but having walls painted NOT WHITE is awesome.

Sanding is fun.

No. It's not. Not fun at all.


I have a dresser. I hated this dresser.


We bought it when Zachie was a toddler, when we lived in Lacey, Washington. We bought it from an unpainted furniture place and had it stained a darkish oak.

We were young.

At some point I painted some of the drawers red. Because I did. Four of the eight big drawers.(I have already sanded the red off one of the drawers in that photo there.)

I may not have been young.

I don't know why I hated this dresser, except that the drawers are kinda shallow, and the red does not work AT ALL in our current bedroom scheme.

So Thor and I have spent much time today annoying the neighbors with sporadic sandings. Our hands do not like the vibrating and shaking and the dust in the eyes is no good.

But now it's looking really cool.  I was going to paint the case with dark gray, so that the grain still sorta shows, and paint the drawer fronts peacock blue, the color of our walls.

Also, I papered the light switch cover with some cool wrapping paper and about eight layers of mod podge.

But I am loving the raw stripped worn wood look of the sanded wood, so I am rethinking the whole thing. I am gonna just oil the hell outta the dresser with lemon oil and leave it at that. I can always finish it later if that doesn't work.

The idea behind our bedroom these days is -- okay. I have an idea. I know what I want. I just don't know what to call it. It's supposed to feel like the colonial days in the Caribbean ( c'mon, spellcheck. I add two "r"s and just one "b", and you can't figure out it's supposed to be Caribbean? Sad and pathetic.) or India or Africa, but not the bamboo pole and palm leaf. Instead it's should be feeling like furniture that was hauled in the hold of a ship from England or The Netherlands or you know, Europe.

Our bed is beyond awesome for this, and is in fact the genesis of this idea.

(the wall is peacock now, not white.)

This has no basis in reality, very likely, it's probably about as authentic as an Indiana Jones movie set. But I like it.

I am really tempted now to do the same sorta brutal sanding to this case.  I have already papered the inside back with the same wrapping paper used on the light switch.


This vanity is from my Mom's cousin's home, and is going in the room too, as my instead of bedside table.

But first I have to sand ten drawer fronts.