The Good, the Bad and the Disappointing

Over this last week my design-talented and clearly colour obsessed ;-) blog partner Kelly has festooned us with glorious colour as she narrowed down and decided on a stunning paint colour for her front door.

Well…

I have a yummy colour project of my own to share.

Only… while my beautiful Orange Copper is scrumptious, and the chairs that I (with the help of blogger and sweet-volunteer Nancy from Markus Design) painted are now wonderfully lovely to LOOK at… disappointingly… the project didn’t turn out so well :-(

Perhaps you’ll remember the scenario… I purchased some fantabulous outdoor pillows for the furniture on my front deck. I re-stained my table and chairs to a rich warm brown so that they would coordinate perfectly with 2 of the pillows… but my 2 ugly Adirondack (or Muskoka – which ever name you prefer!) chairs just didn’t fit into the design plan. Come to think of it, I don’t know if they EVER fit in!!

My lovely pillows, with their hits of Orange Copper don’t make the chairs look any better do they?!

Truth be told, while these chairs were comfy to lounge in, they were in horrible condition… the stain was wearing off (why did I EVER choose that colour in the first place?!) and Brian has had to reinforce both chairs with additional pieces of wood so that they couldn’t collapse with us sitting IN them!!

We really should have just replaced them.

But I saw a project in them; I wanted to paint them my phenomenal Orange Copper!

And that’s exactly what I did, with Nancy’s help…

 

 

 

 

Nancy is such a doll!

And a good painter ;-)

We applied 2 coats of paint to all the areas that we could reach without turning the chairs over… painting the underside was going to be my job later in the week, after the paint we applied had a chance to fully cure.

 

But you know… as we were painting our first coat I KNEW we had a problem… and I expressed that concern to Nancy.

I had completely forgotten…

The original stain was oil based :-(

And our first coat coverage of the latex paint suggested that we were going to have adhesion problems. Even after the second coat – which really should have been the final coat – we found we couldn’t fully eliminate the peek-a-boo original stain.

Even though I knew the rules around painting over oil-based paints/stains, I told myself that I’d just let is sit a couple days to fully cure.

Here it is, a week later, and it’s clear that the project was a bust!!

You see… while the paint is essentially “dry”, it’s weeping or sweating a slightly tacky substance that makes it impossible to sit in the chairs :-( Take a close look at this photo… it was taken in the morning so it’s spotted with dew… only when I touch the dew drops the water turns white. Yep… yucky stuff that’s come from the oil-based stain :-(

My brother Brad – a professional painter (among other wonderful things, which I’ll share one day!!) – tells me that the only thing to do is strip the chairs down, prime (which is what I should have done in the first place!) and paint again. But like I said before… these chairs are in declining physical condition; painting the chairs was in large part my way of seeing the chairs last us another year or two. So – really – it’s SO not worth the effort to strip and re-do :-( 

So what will we do?

Well… for now we’ll pick up some in-expensive blankets to cover the chairs so that we can use them. Then we’ll purchase 2 new chairs in a raw wood so that I can paint them my glorious Orange Copper!

Let me show you how fantastic the chairs look… seeing them like this gives me incentive to buy those 2 new chairs and get them painted right away!!

The Good = My absolutely fabulous Orange Copper!

The Bad = Not preping properly… bad me!

The Disappointing = Not having 2 beautiful, re-furbished Adirondack/Muskoka chairs to lounge in on our deck

But I have a new un-opened can of my favourite Orange Copper, ready and waiting for the purchase of 2 new chairs!! I’ll be sure to post photos of the lovely chairs we WILL get to enjoy… once I paint them!!

I’m sharing this almost-transformation with the readers over at Between Naps on the Porch; Susan’s is hosting her 80th Metamorphosis Mondays!