Life Every Day: Blue.

One of my goals to finish by the end of the summer was to paint this dresser blue. Well, it's been a goal to paint it for a long, long time. But I made it a priority to FINALLY finish it before school starts.

I went back and forth on the new color for a while- between a deep, burned orange and blue. Any friend I asked said they liked it as-is. I really like this color too, but couldn't make peace with it with my current curtains, which are a taupe/olive faux silk. I really, really liked those as-is. At first when I painted the dresser, I'd thought those drapes would go to my bedroom, but then that went a different direction, and I really like them where they are so....the dresser needed to change. It wasn't a glaring problem, or I would have done this, say....2 years ago.

So, the back and forth, and then I saw this and this, and my mind was SET on the blue- I like this blue, but have almost nothing in that color, and it will really pop well with the types of colors I typically have out. It's interesting, but not crazy. Seasonless.

So.... to finish it quickly, and cheaply, and try out the new shade, I used spray paint- Krylon Oxford Blue in Satin finish. (I've spray painted before with good, lasting results.) The entire project took three hours (including all the drying times between coats) from start of dismantling the dresser and contents, to putting the stuff back in. This is my kind of hands-on project.

The only thing I would do differently is not apply the clear coat afterwards, which dries unevenly, no matter what I do, any time I use it. Apparently it doesn't reliably do what it's supposed to do, or, I am doing it wrong, despite following directions. The paint looked best before I clear coated it- but since taking these shots, I "sanded" the clear coat down a bit with paper towels and that actually helped a ton.

This is what the dresser looked like originally, when I saved it from the trash.