Things I Love Thursday: Rustoleum Painter's Touch

Perhaps you've noticed that I haven't posted for a while. That is because my little girl's bed is sucking my will to live. I cannot even begin to tell you the trouble I've had with it. My husband did his part (actually building the bed) over 2 Saturdays. Then, it was my job to paint/finish the job.

I already had a can of white paint from Walmart (like the kind you would paint a wall with), so I used that to paint it. It was fine, but then I used polyurethane to seal it. BIG TROUBLE. It left yellow streaks everywhere. It looked so awful, like someone had peed all over the whole thing.

I got mad and ignored it for a week.

Then I decided to sand off the polyurethane and repaint. That was not so bad because I used this handy spray paint and it only took a few hours.

Except then I decided to stain it to make it look shabby. BAD IDEA. It made it look super dirty and gross. Like I'd left it out in a hurricane. I got mad and yelled at my kids for being so inconsiderate as to interrupt my precious craft time by asking me to get them a snack. Then I loaded everyone in the van and drove to the local hardware store.

(Which, by the way, is tiny. It's a miracle it's even in business. And there's this weird old guy who works there who always has some random freakish thing to say to me, like how I should repopulate the earth on my own or something.)

So at the hardware store this time I ask the old guy if he has a lighter color stain than the walnut I had been using. And he proceeds to go off on a tangent about how walnut stain is made from actual walnuts when they shell them, and if you've ever done it than you get it all over your hands, etc., etc. 

In my head I am thinking, "Shut up. I left my kids in the car so I could run in here and grab some stain, and you're just jabbering away like I have all the time in the world." (The problems with the bed had made me ultra-grumpy.)

Then, out of the blue, he looks at me and says, "Remember, every time you lose your temper you create a stain on your soul."

??????

Head hanging in shame, I buy the new stain. And apologize to my kids in the car.

But that stain was still dirty looking and so the frustration continued. Until my dear mother showed up, listened to my tirade, and said "I'll come down and repaint it for you on Friday." Which was a really nice offer, but I didn't really need her to do that. I mostly needed her to hear my rant. Then I realized I could just buy a couple more cans of spray paint and cover up the stain mess.

And so I did. And it looks glorious now, awaiting its' final coat of spray-on sealer (also from Rustoleum). It's bright white like I hoped for, instead of pee-yellow or hurricane-brown. 

Thank you, Rustoleum. Thank you, old guy for helping me check my temper. Thank you, Mom, for listening. It takes a village.