Don’t forget to read the first part of the bench saga!
Here are some before photos of the bench again:
Today I finally got out my sander and primer and started on the bench. I sanded it all over with my little Mouse sander, wiped it down, and then started priming.
I used this primer that I got at Lowe’s awhile back. It didn’t work great for the kitchen chairs, but I found it worked just fine for the bench. It is interior primer, but like I said in the last post the bench is going to be under the porch roof, and any “rustic-ness” will be fine anyway. I beg to differ with their statement “Hides previous color in one coat”, though, although it may be that the statement just applies to walls and not wood furniture.
While waiting for the primer to dry, I ate some of one of my favorite Fall snacks, Mellocreme pumpkins!
At this point I still wasn’t sure what color I wanted to paint the bench. I had originally planned to paint it a sort of off-white to go with the other things on the porch, but after priming it and seeing how many flaws showed up once it was white, I thought that might not be such a great idea. Then I texted Marnie and she said use brown and white, and I thought, “I’ll paint it brown and dry-brush white over the brown!”
The primer dried quickly because the bench was sitting in the sun, so I went back out and got my container of Sherwin-Williams Urbane Bronze in their sample formula. I bought a sample of Urbane Bronze and a sample of Priscilla, a nice pink, the other week. They are both colors I’m considering painting our house with, if we ever get to paint our house. I figured I’d buy samples and paint them somewhere on the house so I can see which one I think would look better. Right now I’m leaning toward the Urbane Bronze, as mentioned in my last bench post. It’s a grayish brown or a brownish gray. So modern!
I painted the bench all over in Urbane Bronze and let it dry for a couple of hours. Then the Hubs came in and said he had welded a triangle on my shepherd’s hook that I got at the estate sale a couple of weeks ago. The triangle gives you something to pound on to get the hook into the ground.
When I found it at the sale, it had this bird feeder on it. The feeder contains a suet block, a chunk of suet usually with seeds and other things for birds to eat. I had gotten 3 nice new suet blocks at the same estate sale, and The Hubs chose this one to put in the feeder today.
Hopefully the birds will discover it soon even if it is in the sun a bit!
Another thing I did while I was waiting for the paint to dry was this:
Philip came and snuggled up on my lap for a little while. I couldn’t resist showing you this adorable photo of him!
So here’s what the bench looks like with one coat of Urbane Bronze.
Because the paint is just a sample formula, it doesn’t cover extremely well. Also, you can see some start/stop brush marks. Note how I put the feet up on boxes so I can paint the lowest parts of the feet without getting the brush in all the icky stuff that fell off the bench when I sanded and cleaned it. I used the same boxes for the kitchen chairs when I painted them. I mean, how often do you find four boxes that are the same size to use for this application? I’ll keep them as long as they hold up! I went back and painted the back leg and went over some of the brush strokes and it was much improved.
I was planning to do the dry brushing in white today once the paint dried, but now it’s like 90 degrees out and I do have work-work to do, so I’m waiting until tomorrow morning to do that next step. Progress, though! Stay tuned for the next porch bench post!
every day's just like starting over 