People said these posts are boring. This is the last one.  I promise. I had it written now for awhile, but I didn’t want to bore people too much.  Anyway… this is the last post.  Enjoy… or please try to.

With the primer done, it was time to move on to the actual paint.  This piece of furniture is a little different though, because it has a wicker back.  For that reason, I took some cheapo spray paint… …told  you it was cheap…and hit that part of the chair:

Why?  Wicker/Reed is tough to get into all the little cracks.  While I planned to give it some of my actual paint, I figured this would be a way to fill in a few spots with black that wouldn’t get it otherwise.

Not perfect.. and I’ll still take a paint brush to it.  However, it will allow me to use a smaller amount of paint on the brush and avoid any type of clumping. 

After the spray paint, I got some higher quality stuff..

….and applied the first coat.

There were still some noticeable imperfections with just one coat…

My dog also has one coat…

So, a few days later, I applied a second coat… AND VOILA!  The finished product:

From this… to this…

Not bad!  Hopefully, it lasts…

After finishing up with the sandpaper, you have to put down a layer of goodness across the chair.  It’s got to be something that will stick to the wood like mad and let paint stick to it like mad.

It’s Primer People!  I really enjoy this product.  If you get any on you, it doesn’t come off unless you use paint thinner.  It’s oil-based, so that’s what happens.  However, it really makes you feel confident that what you’re putting on the surface will stay there for a millennium.  (In the year 3000… NBC finally decides what to do with Jay Leno.)

When you put a coat of primer on, the furniture will go from its original state to a strange state of not really being prepared for anything.

Make sure the primer is given a good amount of time to dry.  It’s the most important part to make sure your paint will last a long time.  I probably could have done two coats of primer, but I was too inpatient and wanted to get going with the black paint.

Well, we’re on our way to get the rocking chair into its new state.  That means it must be sanded first.

Sanding will do a couple things.  It will first of all roughen up some of the edges, but it will also smooth some of the rocking chair’s bigger imperfections. 

You need to roughen the edges some to give the primer a better surface to adhere to.  While it will adhere to the chair’s lacquered surface, if there are some microscopic scratches, it will do a lot better.

I used a P100 grit sand paper, which is a very fine feeling to it:

So that’s the chair before anything is done to it.  After 15 minutes of some sanding, it’s left some scratches and dust all over the chair.

After that, I wiped the chair down with a wet cloth and let it dry.  You gotta get all of that dust off of it or you’ll be stuck with the primer adhering to dust particles instead. 

Again, as I mentioned, I’m not a handy man… so a lot of this stuff I’m just kind of making up as we go.  However, thanks for reading!!

After the failure of the Target registry and receiving a mini-rocking chair which is useless unless Stunning or I was a midget and planned to use the chair for ourselves, we decided to try it again.  We discovered adult rocking chairs are not $75, but closer to $200 in most cases.  That’s why we abandoned Target and headed to Craigslist where, much like old prostitutes, there is quite the aftermarket for rocking chairs. 

This time, instead of $200 for a rocking chair, we found one for $25.  It’s freaking comfortable too!  The lady we bought it from (we safely met in a parking lot next to a busy road and in a church parking lot) said it had rocked a lot of babies to sleep and was “filled with a lot of love”.  Needless to say, I was excited that it had proved to be a baby rocking machine, but I did not languish the cheesy imagery of it being filled with love.

Unfortunately, it’s not the right color.  We’re doing black and white in the nursery, so brown will not go.  (This is what I am told from my wife who has instructed me that brown shall never be mixed with black. It’s like the 11th commandment or something..)

For this reason, I am painting it.  It shall be black.  We already purchased a brown changing table from Ikea and I painted that black.  (It took me days to finish this project… it required me sanding off or literally peeling my own layers of paint thanks to my mistakes.)  Now, I have another project that I’m going to keep you guys up to date with.  It could be interesting, because I’m not a handy-man by any means (as the changing table witnessed).  However, I’m going to do my best to get this thing looking nice.  Whether that happens or not, I have no idea.

We registered for a rocking chair.  We weren’t too hip on a “glider”, but we thought at rocking chair would be a good idea.  Take a look at the rocking chair we registered for:

Please see this page for more information.  It is called “Spindle Rocking Chair – White”

It’s pretty cool!  Only $75.00 and the idea of hanging with our boy in there rocking him to sleep was very exciting.  It was one of the most expensive things we registered for, so imagine our joy when we noticed it was purchased off the registry and sent to us!  We eagerly awaited its arrival. 

Two days later we found out that the chair had arrived and rushed home to see it.  We ripped the box open and noticed one of the rocking pieces on the bottom was broken.  Bummer!  Then we noticed… this thing is small. 

Please refer back to this page.  This time look at it a little closer and you’ll realize the price was so good because it was a miniature rocking chair, for children.  It would hardly fit my rear end. 

Stunning returned it to Target and we began our quest for another rocking chair.  More to come…