Possessed Dresser Saga

I wrote this blog in my head while it was happening..does anyone else ever do that?

So, as part of moving in with Pam and Claire, I am using an old dresser of Pam's, which was painted with psychedelically brightly colored daisies (Pam and Claire, I will forgive for saying it looked like "me"...I am not eight years old, thank you ;-) ). So I decided to repaint it.

Two of my walls are orange. What goes well with orange? Red of course! So I started painting over the trippy daisies...briefly thinking "should I sand this first? Maybe primer it? Nah...". So the first coat of red goes on. It's more magenta than red...too close to pink. I'm not liking it. Coats 2 and 3 go on and the daisies are still making their presence know. Okay, forget this. I will sand it. So the next day I borrow a sander from some friends and start sanding...first sandpaper- too fine. I find a paper that will probably gouge the wood, but hey, these daisies are quite determined to stay put.

The sanding commences...the paint melting into globs under the friction from the sander follows. Okay, forget all of this! Bring on the paint stripper. So the next day (oh yeah, there is a reason the title of this blog has the word "saga" in it), I bring over my paint stripping items (yeah I have those handy :))...EXCEPT... the stripper is about two years old and is quite glutinous in consistency and about doubly potent fume-wise. Oh well, I'll try it anyways. An hour later, I am on the road to Home Depot to buy more NEW paint stripper :).

Application of the strongest paint stripper know to man commences. Massive scraping action and falling globs of paint follows. At this point, I really do think the fumes were affecting me (I did have the garage door open, thank you very much)...I couldn't stop giggling...I kept stepping in the gooey paint globs and sticking to the garage floor and the paper I had laid down to keep the globs from getting on the garage floor, my gloves were sticking to the dresser, various spots on my arms were burning from the spattered stripper... seriously, if someone could see me now...

I doused the possessed dresser (I'd decided that it liked its paint and was laughing at my attempts to depaint it...either that or someone anodized the stupid thing) with the turpentine based after wash...more fumes...more giggliness. Enter roommate Claire who listened wide-eyed as I proceed to berate this "free" dresser at about a million words per second (it was the fumes talking, really, even I can't normally talk that fast!). The dresser won last night's battle.

So today, I proceed back over to the house to once and for all conquer the dresser. Using a paint scraper, I decently rid the dresser of its rad-hard coating...meanwhile breathing in some dust...I notice just how many layers of paint I am taking off...I start wondering how old this dresser is...lead paint...what are symptoms of lead poisoning again? All I can remember is that if you strike a knife against a bone that belonged to a human with lead poisoning, it will spark (thank you MacGyver for cluttering up those 3 brain cells with that knowledge). I'm not volunteering any of my bones...

Ha, told you this was a long one! So anyways, paint is mostly removed and any paint bumps remaining will give the dresser character. I put coat one of paint on. Oh, I decided to go with bright purple instead of red. It's looking awesome and will go well with the orange. Promise. And it will look like a grown-up's room too :D. Pictures will follow this weekend.

Oh and I think I only killed about 4 million brain cells in the process...