My Biggest Frustration

Looking through the picture file I created for this week’s letter blog, I see there aren’t many stories — and not a lot of pictures either!

My biggest frustration came from spray painting ladybugs. Two things were going on and neither of them good!

Taping it off for the different colors is a pain. “Can I paint the body color first then tape it off for the black?” I wanted to know.

“Yeah. Black will cover most anything,” my handsome husband said.

I had three ladybugs cut and ready to paint. I painted one all red, one all purple, and one all yellow, saving myself the time and aggravation of taping it off twice.

My red one wasn’t sprayed evenly so the next day I applied a second coat. Almost right away wrinkles appeared.

“Why did it do that?” I asked.

“Because the paint underneath wasn’t dry,” Mike answered.

“I waited twenty-four hours,” I defended.

“What’s the can say?” he wanted to know.

I looked. “Forty-eight hours! Now what do I do?”

“Sand it off or strip it,” was his answer.

Then the rains came. Not steady but intermittent showers. I sat on the patio and went to work on the wrinkled red ladybug. I tried sanding and found it was a lot of work. I got the palm sander out and all that did was melt the paint and move lumps around. I set it aside and went to work on the purple one. Mike came out on the patio as I was taping it off.

“Peg, you can’t spray paint if it’s raining or threatening rain,” he said.

Did I listen?

NO!

“Why not?” I wanted to know.

“It’ll take longer to dry,” Mike said.

Well, I don’t care if it takes twenty minutes or two hours. I can work with that. I applied kind of a heavy coat and it was all shiny and purdy when I was done. I left to do something else and after a half hour went back to pull the tape. I was so excited to be one step closer to done. My heart fell when I saw the results. The paint was dry, powdery, didn’t shine, and had wrinkles!

“Why did it do that?”

“It’s drying before it hits the surface and it can’t level out.”

Okay. I’m learning. None of this stuff happened before when I made my other ladybugs so I’m guessing the weather was a big factor. I resigned myself to stripping it and went to the garage for the lacquer thinner. I decided to try a test spot and used a cotton ball. It works! But a cotton ball didn’t seem optimal to me. “Can I put it in a spray bottle?” I asked Mike.

“It might melt some of the plastic in the sprayer,” he guessed.

“So basically, that means it’s a single use sprayer?” I could work with that.

I filled a fingertip spray bottle with thinner and sprayed the part I wanted to remove. It didn’t take long for it to loosen the paint and I could scrape it right off. This made me very happy! I worked until I had the black and underlying purple paint stripped off. Mike thought the thinner might lift the tape too but it looks to me like it’s still stuck down nice and tight.

The next day, having learned my lesson, I sprayed painted a sample piece. I set it aside to dry intending to check it in twenty minutes, but life got in the way.

We had a refrigerator go out about a year ago. Luckily, we had a second one. On a trip past Root’s, a place the services, repairs, and sells both new and used appliances, we stopped. We’ve bought from this third-generation business before and they do an excellent job. Mike wanted to check out used fridges so we could once again have a spare. We found out that even a used fridge is a few hundred dollars.

“How much is it to have him come out and look at ours?” we asked the attendant.

“It’s a seventy-five-dollar service call.”

We didn’t exactly make an appointment but Bill, the repair guy, would call when he had an opening.

Bill called the day I was painting and showed up shortly after I painted my sample piece. I took Bondi out with me and set her in the grass thinking she’d follow me. Just outside the garage door she found a furry treat that used to be a mouse. I knew she had something when she took off for the house. She was right not to let me catch her. When I finally did and saw what she had, I took it away from her. This dog is such a different dog than Itsy and Ginger were! Bondi eats anything and everything! Weeds, rocks, egg shells she digs out of my scrap bucket, anything that comes out of either end of a cat! OY!

Our refrigerator only needed a new controller and Bill had it fixed in no time. It was cheaper than a used fridge.

“We should’ve done that a year ago,” Mike said.

“Yeah, well, you just can’t get in a hurry about this stuff.” That’s one of my favorite sayings by my handsome neighbor Lamar. It took him fifteen years to put a handrail up on the cellar steps and that was the reason behind it.

When I got back to my sample it was shiny and bright. Yay! I got the ladybug out intending to spray it. I looked at the sky and the clouds were moving in. Did I miss my window of opportunity? I took a chance and sprayed it anyway. It came out shiny and bright! I put it aside to dry a bit before I took the tape off. When I came back out my heart sank into my stomach. It was another fail. It’s dull and streaky. Who knew spray paint was so temperamental!

Now I’ve had to set this one aside, too. I was mourning over it, thinking I’m going to have to strip it again, when a thought occurs to me. I can flip it over! The other side is a clean, unpainted surface! Why didn’t I think of that before!

“Peg, you’re a slow thinker, remember?” you say.

And you’re right. It certainly took me days and wasted hours of sanding and stripping before I thought of it. But I don’t know how it’ll go over with the lady who’s paying me good money for it.

“She’ll never see the back once it’s mounted,” you say.

I know. It just doesn’t seem right. I’m thinking I’ll recut ladybugs for my sale pieces and finish these for my kids. I’m sure Kevin and Kandyce won’t mind if there’s paint on both sides. They call imperfections and little boo-boos character.