Learned Something from a Mess

I put together a cupboard, meant to hang on the wall, that I think of as Grandma's Cupboard. As it was meant to look old, I varnished the whole thing in oak, and then mixed up some white, antique gold and a speck of red to create a warm, eggshell colour to paint it with. It was an unmitigated disaster!

Last evening, we had an absolutely mad thunder, hail, wind and rain-storm; the power, of course, went out. So while trying to fall asleep, I was thinking of what I might be able to do to save this little cupboard. Okay, I thought, it is acrylic paint, cheap $ store stuff, and thus not waterproof. What if I wet it down? Would the ugly paint job come off?



Tepid water, paper towels, Q-tips and what I think is a lobster-pick of some sort, helped to get rid of that awful paint job. In case you ever find yourself in the same boat, here is what I did.

With a barely damp cotton swab for the narrow spaces, and a barely damp paper towel for the larger, I rubbed each area individually; you can see that the side closest to the bowl is free of paint, and that there is an area of scratched paint in the centre. The rubbing seemed to soften and dissolve the paint a little, and I used the ends of the lobster pick - one is spatula-shaped, the other has a tapered and rounded point - to carefully scrape/lift off the cream paint. It had to be done a little at a time, as the dampish paint soon dried out again. It took a couple of hours, all told....



Interestingly, the finish looks kind of pickled now! Up close, it looks like an old piece of furniture that has been thoroughly scraped prior to repainting. I'll run some very fine sandpaper along the components, to settle the grain down a bit, and then I will try to paint again, with pale grey chalk paint. If that works, I'll rub back the edges for wear, and I'll have a usable piece of furniture.

The power didn't come on again until around 10 a.m. today. Fortunately, we have a generator. The Carpenter-in-Chief has gone out for wood to make the staircase for the Klompenfabriek; I thought I'd like to get back to that.