The Dunny Shelves

LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES

1. I did a botched up job of spray painting, my first mistake being that I didn't tape off the places I didn't want painted very well, and second I did not strip or sand the wood before spray painting. What happened because of this is that the spray paint pooled in certain places because of whatever kind of finish was on the wood. I re-sprayed about 4 times and finally came to the conclusion that it would never cover evenly.

2. HOWEVER bad my spray painting went, my next intuition was correct. I took acrylic paint and covered the places the spray paint had trouble covering. When I went to an hardware store they said that is fine since they are both water-based paints.

3. After touching up with the white acrylic paint I mixed my own purple acrylic paint since I knew the purple spray paint was not the answer. It requires a steady hand and patience to paint a piece like this because the detail I wanted to remain white. I messed up a lot, but went back with a tiny brush to cover the purple with white again. This can potentially be an endless process, but at some point you need to just decide it's good enough.

NOTE: if you want detail, but it is not built into your piece, you could consider painting the detail in. I suggest a darker color on a lighter color simply because you hopefully would only have to do one coat.

So for future reference: SPRAY PAINTING DOES NOT COVER ALL THINGS. You may need to prime or sand a piece a lot before painting. For detailed pieces, in the end, it may be easier to just do it by hand.