How to Save a Painting Disaster!

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Oh, y’all.  Have you ever thought you were going to have a complete meltdown?

I’ve done my fair share of painting things, but my piano…

MY PIANO!

If you’ve been following along on Instagram or in my weekly updates, you’ve seen sneak peaks of foyer and piano updates, but what I didn’t mention was how I almost lost my mind!

Yes.  That did happen.  All I was trying to do was scratch up the surface so I could repaint.

That’s all.  Not anything super major.  Just a little sanding.  Then a quick coat of primer and two coats of Snowbound. Easy as a Lemon Squeezy.

Um.  Lemon Sqeezies must be like carrying a eighty five pound bucket of bricks up a hill.

So here’s the story:

I went and bought a new mouse sander from the local hardware store because all I have is a rotary sander, and I didn’t want to make a Mt. Everest kind of mess in the foyer.  There is zero chance of taking this piano outside to paint, so… yeah.

(Just to let you know this post may contain affiliate links to resources that I love.)

That’s the mouse sander that caused all the pain.  Ok.  In it’s defense, it’s really not the sander’s fault. The fault lies in the sand-ee.  Or the Paint-er, rather.

Apparently, when I painted the first time, I didn’t scratch up the surface of the original finish quite enough.  So when I went to just “Scratch Up the Surface”, this happened:

Lesson that I thought I had already learned: LEARNED.

If you’ve ever sanded anything, you know that when this happens every fiber in your body stands at attention and cries out in despair.

So I emailed my friend, Cassie, and she said to just grab some wood filler and do a skim coat. Then I could give it a coat of oil based primer to seal the paint in.

BUT, disaster number 2 struck.

When I went to smooth out the skim coat, the paint started peeling up worse! I guess the wood filler moistened the paint and just made it come right up when I pulled my tool across it.

I thought it was over.  I thought I was going to be calling the Piano Funeral Home and ordering a Piano sized casket.

But we all know that this is really not the end.  There is always a way to save a disaster like this.

That’s when it dawned on me that I could unscrew the top and take it outside and strip it.

Stripping = Last Resort Ever

My favorite stripper is Citri-strip.  It works amazingly well and doesn’t smell like a mad scientist’s lab room. 

This time I grabbed a spray can and I LOVED it. So easy to apply.

I use these little grill drip pans for all kinds of DIY stuff, especially when I paint. 

The last and final disaster in this saga came when the rain began to pelt at my back, and I had to drag this mess in the garage and leave it.  What a day!

Eventually, I was able to get all the grimy mess off of the top and sand it down with, yes… my rotary sander.

Seeing these planks made me wish I could sand it down all the way and stain it, but I think that would look kind of dumb with a white piano.

So, now it’s white!  I just painted  a primer coat and then two coats of Snowbound so it would match the piano.

I’ll be sharing that post very soon, so check back to see it!

Have you ever had a DIY disaster?  What happened and how did you save it?

Let me know down in the comments below!