First Layers

First Layers
These chairs started out life in my kitchen as unpainted furniture. They reinvented themselves by becoming pecan stained and polyurethaned. They lived for many busy years at a matching formica kitchen table, sturdily supporting our family through uncounted daily meals and lots of happy parties.
Pretty soon, that is to say, within ten years, they began to get bored with their appearance and wanted a redo of some sort. I know this because they were speaking to me, their mother. Changing them was gonna be hard work. They were strongly protected by the polyurethane and making them ready to accept a new color meant breaking down that satin barrier somehow. Fortunately, my brother knows about this kind of stuff and suggested using a "liquid sander". Just by rubbing it on, the barrier would open up and I could paint a base coat onto this impervious finish. Ahhh.
Easy peasy.
Now, I knew that I was taking the cowards way out of this pickle, but I didn't care. I just didn't have the patience or the hand strength to sand each and every curve and crevice of four large chairs. With enthusiasm and optimism, I rubbed down each chair using lots of soft cloths and paper towels, too. As soon as that was done, I applied Kilz.
Kilz. Sounds really final doesn't it? It happens to be a water based, base coat, paint product that promises to seal anything you paint it on and also makes a nice surface to apply your "real"color to.
Apparently, it works! Here are the four formerly brownish stained chairs with their under coats on. From here on in I will be applying deeper colors of paint mixed with a faux extender.
I've done this technique with several walls in my house, but this is the first time I've tried it with chairs.
In fact, all of this work was done in December and I know that it is a success. Here we are six months later and the chairs have been in use for lots of meals and family parties and the paint is actually staying on! Zowey! I sure do like it when things work.