I finished the top 2 main carcasses of units. My wife and I painted the top cabinets 2 days ago with SW Pro Classic Oil based enamel.
This morning we carried the 4 foot square top cabinets up the stairs and made a hair pin curve at the top. I'm glad that turn worked out OK.
Anyway I have to now add the back bead board panels, build the upper glass door frames and build the upper cabinets top trim. And then paint all of that including the 16 adjustable shelves.
There is no doubt in my mind that the panting is the hard part. In a few minutes am going the spray the final. semi-gloss black enamel coat on to the last face frames for the two vanities + tall cabinet that I have been working on for our master bathroom.
I will be GLAD!! I'm here to tell you that semi-gloss black shows every teeny flaw. I was carefull assembling the frames, little to no lippage; sanded them baby butt smooth,looked awful (as per a previous post). Fixed the "awful" with a coat of SW Wall & Wood primer, it really does sand easily. Still needed some more work here and there, fixed with a glazing putty I made with talc & shellac.
Next are mahogany doors and drawer fronts, I will be SOOOO glad to get pack to clear finishes :)
I just want to say Leon, that I particularly enjoy your posts. At this poi nt in my life I don't know if I am cut out for shop work, but I always enjo y looking and at and admiring your work. You and Karl both have a great ey e for designing and executing very clean, functional designs, which are rig ht in my wheel house of appreciation. Always good stuff, and I appreciate the time you take to post your work.
If I might be so bold as to suggest something on your finishing...
When I cannot spray (cough... cough... help me...) then I have to roll, bru sh, etc., as needed. Good brushes well cleaned and maintained are a must, and no doubt after visiting your shop that like all your equipment your bru shes are in top shape. And your choice of enamel is excellent.
So... then technique. When I have to finish something I cannot spray (oh.. the pain!) then I don't finish conventionally as it takes too much time. What I do and might suggest to you is to use paint pads. I use them for f inishing shelves, cabinet sides, flats on large doors, and even wider rails and stiles. I actually started using them when I was refinishing a lot an d found out how well they worked on long finishes. I used these
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by the case as I cold get about 20 to 30 minutes out of them, then they fel l apart. Sometimes more, but I can cover a helluva lot of ground in a half hour. These are wide, they lay out a great finish, and when done you just toss them. You have to cut in your inside corners, but you would be surpr ised how little; run the brush so that you get about 1/2" away from the cor ner and you can pad the rest. If done properly with the correct amount of paint (or poly as I found) will leave a near sprayed finish. MUCH smoother than a fine texture foam finishing roller. Heck, they're $2, certainly wo rth trying out with your finish on a clean piece of plywood. Even if you j ust used them for your shelving it would speed things up.
A few years ago I showed that trick to one of my finishing comrades, and he loved it. Like me, he had been rolling out and leaving it to dry, or roll ing out and back brushing. Ouch. He loved the final finish, but he went u ptown on this idea and bought these because he could clean them and reuse t hem. Crap... I thought I was cheap!
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You should also know that they make those pads in different sized, probably even a 2 or 3 inch that might be great for rail and stile.
It's still pretty hot down here, so don't know if you would benefit from th inning or not. When I paint with a brush/roller, I rarely thin and then on ly about 10% of volume. When I pad, I thin 10% of volume because it allows me to work faster and get a quicker layout.
Well it is a pleasure sharing when I get replies like yours Robert. I know that you know what you are talking about. We, especially you tend to share from actual knowledge vs something we read and repeated. With me, knowledge from experience always trumps something you read. Anyway. ...
I pretty much stick with Purdy or Wooster and after more than a hand full of years of painting houses with a deer friend I learned that a 3" sash brush, sometimes 2-1/2", are my favorite sizes for detail work.
LOL, like minds. I discovered pad brushes on my own about 12-15 years ago. There are 7 new ones in my tool chest right now.. When my friend and I painted we always used brushes and rollers. He almost without exception rolled the latex on the walls, I painted all of the trim and cabinets with oil based enamel. My experience has been that the pad brushes are terrific with latex paints, I have tried them with oil based but was never quite as happy with the application of oil based. Maybe I should give that another visit. Any way we discovered the 4" dense foam rollers many years ago and we much preferred the results when working with oil based.
They last longer with latex and that may very well be why I prefer them over the foam roller when working with latex.
One of the big issues I had to watch out for were the shelf pin holes, each inner panel has 46 and I did not want to fill the holes. I cut in with the
3 inch brush and rolled over the holes.
LOL , I think I remembering thinking to myself, these pad brushes are so good that I need to thoroughly clean them for re use. Then one day I realized that 15-30 minutes of my time was worth more than $2.
Well there you go, I never thin and don't recall thinning when we tried the pads and oil based many years ago. I built 3 large cabinets and work stations for Kim's sewing studio. We painted all 3 with the same paint. The heat in the garage was pretty brutal this year and fans were blowing to make it tolerable. I'm sure this added to the issues that we ran into which we had not in the winter on the previous 2 pieces.
Thanks for the kind words, Bill. Not too many of us left around here anymore, but there are still little gems to be found from time to time for all of us.
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