Labor of Love Part I

I inherited this china hutch when my Mother in Law passed away in '03.
It stayed  downstairs in the basement FOREVER
and then I began to prime it for painting sometime in '05 or '06
then I never finished it
I was thinking about giving it away selling it on Cl for cheap
BUT
I changed my mind and decided I was going to keep it and make it look great again!

My first big mistake was priming with this horrid pink primer and not allowing
enough time for it to dry before pain int the first coat of red.
Apparently, red is a hard color to get right when mixing and
I knew it was going to be bad after the first coat.

The pink you see in the above pictures is the primer
when you add red on top of that
you get HOT PINK!
WoWSERS!
Hot Pink was not the look I was going for so I had to go back
to Home Depot and figure out if I wanted to pain it all over again or
strip and start over

I chose to start over and buy stripper
$40 later with stripper and cheap brushes
I began to strip this over fall break in Oct.
Stripping pain is a lot of hard work and a huge mess!
when the paint comes off, it looks like gooey snot
just sayin'
Grant wanted to help scrape so I let him
Always wants to help DO something!

I didn't take any pictures of the stripping part
But it took a really long time and I had to use a lot of elbow grease
to get the paint out of creases and corners

Oh and I forgot to mention that I took off the smal spindles you see
I filled in holes with wood putty and let dry
after stripping and cleaning it all of
I had to sand it!
AGAIN, a lot of work and time
I had to sand with 120 grit first
all over
then go back and sand with 220 grit paper
When it was all sanded down
she got one more good washing with water and
I let it dry for a couple of days

FINALLY
my hutch was ready to be painted

Go to Part II to see Before?after