The fun that never ends: Chair Update

Last you heard, I had chosen the faric for the infamous french chair that I classy-ly salvaged from the garbage. I am SOOO close to being finished with it. Indeed, I feel like it is so close but so far! You'd think (and hope, I bet) that I would be finished with the chair by now; however, this chair is full of surprises. Last weekend I spent a grand total of seven hours working on the chair. What did I accomplish? I got it sanded and primed.

Here is what I started with:

After removing the seat pad, my goal was to sand away all of the gold (and the underlying coat of red, which you can't quite see in this picture) and repaint the chair's frame a brilliant white. Easy, right? Nope! Three and a half hours later, here is where I was:

At this point, I really began to wonder if I ought to pursue another way to remove the gold paint. It seemed that the gold was an oil-based paint or something. It was beyond stubborn when it came to my trying to sand, scrape, rub, etc., it off of the wood. Particularly, I wondered if I should strip the wood. Having read articles about how and when to strip wood furniture, I breaked from the chair (my finger and arms were quite worn out...) to hop inside and on to the internet to see what folks said.

Most of everything that I read talked about the horrors of striping wood and strongly recommended trying to strip as a very-last-point-of-no-return option. After looking through a few articles I thought, "Well, I guess I can stick it out. I mean, maybe I am just being a wimp and simple need to put some more time and elbow grease in to it."

So I worked for two more hours that day, and three more hours the next day and I finally finished. 

Moral of the story? I definitely should have opted for stripping. <Le sigh> Lesson learned. As much as I might be tempted to call this "The Project From H-E-Double-Hockey-Stix", I have decided to call it more affectionately my "Labor of Love." Why? Because I want to finish the job well and enjoy the finished project. I would much rather be sitting on the chair in six months thinking, "Oh, all of the work was worth it!" instead of "Man, Chair, you sure were a pain."

Having removed the paint, I quickly primed and painted the chair.

Now she is all ready for her dress fitting! I would have started this soon after the paint dried; however I needed to send away for some Curve-Ease (aka Ply Grip) to use for attaching the fabric to the frame. I just received that, so I plan to finish this baby up in the next couple of days. Stay tuned! This time for real!