Fool’s Errand

Remember this table that I painted one morning before dawn a couple of weeks ago.  Well since then it has rained a lot and it has not been possible to finish painting the chairs.  But I ran into some problems.

With the first rain some paint chipped off the table despite the fact that I sanded away all the loose paint and wiped the table clean.  The chipping paint is in such poor condition that every time it gets wet, it ripples and chips away.  I have been tying to sand away all the loose paint from chairs, but the mission has proved impossible and frustrating.  I finally decided to go speculate a belt sander to help me in the process.  As I was standing in the power tool aisle at the corner hardware store, feeling sick about the prices of the belt sanders, my eyes dropped down to the floor as I thought, and there I saw the Dremmel Tools.  I thought, “I have a Dremmel!”  I went home with an $8.00 paint remover attachment.  I was ready to blast away these chairs.  I set up the Dremmel, attached my new tool and not only removed the loose paint, but took it down to the bare iron.  Thirty minutes later, the sanding grain on my new tool was completely gone—One chair was sanded, $8.00, poof, gone.  That was an expensive experiment.  I sanded one other chair with the barrel sander attachment.  It worked well enough.

This morning I washed, primed and painted the two chairs.  After I washed the chairs, more paint rippled and pealed off the chair I sanded with the barrel sander.  Yikes.  I cannot win.  As I painted the chairs it took twice as much paint to cover the primer as it did when I just painted straight on to the table.  I guess I was supposed to use brown primer.

We have seven chairs.  I decided I would paint the five best chairs and recycle the other chairs.  Now that I have no more paint and am feeling like a fool for thinking I could save this patio set from rust obliteration, I am thinking that I will paint one more chair and just keep the others out as extras.  I will place the green set altogether.  Did I mention I have to sand and re-paint the table too?  This is certainly a fool’s errands, but now that I have spent the money, I feel I must finish it.  After it is all painted, the set will be placed under the overhang on our townhouse, so it should not see too much weather and will hopefully not bear and further destruction or chipping. 

I share my story in hopes that you too will not fall to this foolish pursuit.  You cannot paint flaking chipping patio furniture unless you have a sandblaster to remove every shred of paint.

And the saga continues…