Something Different Sunday's

Welcome to Something Different Sunday's. I love blogging about my nails, but I also want to share other things in my life because I do have other hobbies. Almost every Sunday I'm going to talk about something that has nothing to do with nail polish. Many of you know that I recently moved to Switzerland so there is quite a lot to talk about in that area.

Today, I want to show off a little project that I started about a week before I left for Switzerland. FYI, don't ever take on a project like this before you move somewhere because it was hectic and a lot of work.

This is my project. A wicker desk that I've had in my possession for about 9 years. When I first got it my mom and I talked about refinishing it, but 9 years later it still sat in my room dull and dusty as ever.

Desk Chair Before

Desk Front Before

Desk Back Before

Maybe a month before I left I decided that I wanted to refinish my wicker desk. I sorted of started it. I washed it and sanded and chipped some paint away. Seriously the process was going nowhere and it was taking forever.

That's when I decided to pull out the big guns and actually strip the paint off. When I started this I was nervous to use stripper because of the wicker. It is a paper type wicker that is over 50 years old. That is why I started the sanding only process. Till I realized that there were like 10 layers of paint on it. In the past it had been gold, green, a creme yellow and white. The stripper I used was the aerosol version of CitriStrip. Which worked really well! The smell/fumes weren't too bad, but remember to still wear gloves and a mask.

After I stripped it, I had to wash the desk again and I let it dry for two days. Then I did more sanding, paint chipping, and I also used compressed air. After that I was finally ready to paint.

I used spray paint because when you're working with wicker there is a lot of little spaces and spray paint can get into those spots really easily. My first mistake with this project was not using a primer. With any painting project, please use a primer. The paint will just soak into wicker and wood if you don't use a primer. I learned that the hard way. So I immediately went to Home Depot for some primer. I used two coats of Rust-Oleum Ultra Cover 2x White Primer. I would recommend this primer it worked really well.

Once the primer was dry I moved on to the final step. I used Krylon Indoor/Outdoor Spray Paint in White Gloss. Funny story I started to use the flat version and it looked silly, so I had to return all my unused cans. Then I tired semi-gloss and I still didn't like it; again, I had to return the cans. So finally I went and bought the  gloss version. The gloss gave it the extra shine it needed and made it look really fresh. I think I used three coats, but I really lost track after the first coat of primer. haha. What matters is that I finally finished this project the night before my flight.

Well, here is the finished project. The pictures are not fantastic, I took them 30 minutes before I left for the airport. But the end result of my project was awesome. I love that my desk has a fresh coat of paint and I can't wait to use next year sometime.

Desk Chair After

Desk Front After

Desk Back After

 Thanks for joining my Something Different Sunday. Except that it is now Monday here. I started this over four hours ago. Whoops. Well, it's still Sunday in some places. :) More nail polish post coming this later this week.