2013 Recap

To maintain a little tradition of mine, behold: highlights from 2013:

January

-readjusted to living in Albany
-started Women in Public Policy fellowship

 

February

-reunited with GSV alum at a retreat
-had the coolest birthday cake of my life; hit a quarter century

March

- (finally) paid off my credit card balance
-visited Boston

 
April

-visited DC

May

-end of fellowship classes
-got into gardening

June

-roommate summer fun
-lobbied for Women's Equality Act
-end of fellowship

 

 

 July

-unemployed for about 2 weeks
-redid parent's dining room
-hired by IOFA
-lots of gardening
-first trip to Chicago

August

-NKOTB
-Chicago part 2
-beach vacation

September

-GSV reunion
-Montreal visit
-end of summer outdoorsing
-First ChildRight training

 

October

-Surprise champagne rooftop party in NYC
-traveling for work nearly then entire month
-8 year anniversary

 

 

November

-refinished grandpa's chair
-last ChildRight training
-visited DC
-skipped family Thanksgiving/hosted friendsgiving

 

December

-ugly sweater party
-family Christmas visit
-visited the bro in Hilton Head

The chair: Part 5

I had researched a few techniques for how to paint over the gold paint and have it show through with a "distressed" look and my goal was to have something like this:

After poking around the internet seemed to favor Annie Sloan chalk paint... which sells for L18.19 per liter. Yikes. So I found a blogger or two who said they recreated the paint by buying standard house paint and mixing in Plaster of Paris. After seeing their success I tried it out myself by mixing 2 Cups Paint (matte),1/3 Cup Plaster of Paris, and 2 Tbsp Water.

I was nervous but I jumped right in. I mixed up my plaster and paint and slapped it on without being too careful to cover everything perfectly. I kind of hovered it over it as it dried then tried to wipe some off. Unfortunately for me it wasn't dry enough yet and I just smeared paint everywhere. Lame.

test chair leg, post paint application / pre sanding.

So I added some more paint on top of the mess I made to get an even coating and let it dry a bit longer. This time when I went to wipe some off it was totally dry. Oops! So I busted out some sand paper and went at it. I was nervous that I'd sand through the white paint and the gold paint, but it worked perfectly.

Thinking that I'd better work quickly before I figured out a new way to screw the paint up I finished the rest of the chair's base with this technique.

When this dried I flipped the chair over and did exactly the same thing to the top half: slap on some paint, let it dry, then sand it off on the areas that would normally get wear.

Once all the paint dried I tried to seal it all up by rubbing in some clear furniture wax. I read that this would make your paint more scratch resistant, so I was down because I hate using poly (it's annoying to apply and it stinks). The wax may not have been that much easier in the end because it took some serious elbow grease to get in all those nooks and crannys. (I don't have a picture for this step but it looks exactly the same as the picture above).

I have to say, I've moved the chair a few times since I applied the wax and... I don't think it helps at all. The paint scratches and transfers to other things (corners, other furniture) really easily if you bump it while moving. I don't particularly mind for the chair's sake (it make's the sanding more "authentic"!) but I don't love scratching off all the transferred paint with my fingernails. My manicures don't like it either. I'm still not going to poly it, though, because the chair has since found its resting place, so movement isn't really an issue anymore, and I still hate poly. So there.

The Chair: Part 4 - It's GOOOOOOOOLD

 

 BOOM. Nothing like a little spray paint to start your day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





I didn't worry about doing a perfect job with this. If you look closely you can see a few dark spots peeping out in the ridges, and there was even a paint drip or two that I didn't bother to fix. The reason is that I'm going to cover this with some white or cream paint and then distress it, so why bother?

 

But until that happens, I'm going to love the gaudiness while it lasts. Aint she a beaut?

The Chair: Part 3

I finished taking the cloth off the chair and... it looks so naked. Don't stare. It's not polite.

the last piece of fabric

so naked!

Then came the part I was scared of: removing the stain. I first thought I wanted to paid the chair gold and cover it with white crackle paint. Then I thought paint would be too permanent and considered restaining it a darker color. Then I thought about doing either of those things on top of the existing finish (I'm not sure what all was on the chair and how that would affect whatever I put on top of it). Then I got really nervous and considered leaving it as is, because what if I screwed it up and then it looked ugly and I ruined everything and wahhhh!

So of course I went for it. I started small with a few areas I hope wouldn't be too obvious if it was hideous. I used Citristrip Stripping Gel. I heard this was better for furniture because it kind of glops on the surface unlike a liquid which would just run down everything. I applied it with a cheap paint brush and let it sit for about 40 minutes.

 

 

I came back to it with a paper towel and everything wiped right off. It was really quite cool. With that to make me feel cocky I went full force at the chair. I covered the entire top half of the chair in the stripper and let it sit for a while. I actually put it on right before Thanksgiving dinner, so I was afraid it would dry out, even though the bottle says you can leave it on for 24 hours.

I came back to it after dinner and started wiping everything off. It wasn't as easy as the test areas because there are so many groves and ridges. Getting everything off took hours, some muscle, and about half a role of paper towels, and there was still some left on. I used a plastic fork to get some gunk out of the  grooves. When that didn't get everything that was left I did a second coat of stripper on a few areas.Then it looked a lot better, and I figure anything left will probably be hid by whatever I cover it with anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving!