Progress report: First attack

Quite awhile ago, I purchased a large rectangular table with 6 chairs at a garage sale for 50$. The table and chairs are solid wood and sturdily made. A great price, no? Wait until you see what it looks like: Yes, it is, indeed, neon green and black. Functional, but not necessarily esthetically pleasing unless you are looking for some 'POP' and energy in your kitchen.
For awhile now, I've been planning the refurbishment of my table set. I prepared, researched and planned, purchasing my supplies and working out a strategy. I would use the palm sander my Grandpa gave me and sand down the chairs to roughen them up, allowing me to repaint them completely black. The table top, I would strip the neon green from, painting the rest of the legs and frame in a similar manner to the chair.

First thing I have learned in this process: a planned strategy is quickly tossed out the window.

Luckily, on Wednesday I did some investigatory sanding on one of the chairs and realized that the top layer of paint was thoroughly chipping away under the sander. Seems like a good thing, hey? It isn't, though, because it meant I had to get ALL of the top layer of paint off before I can put my next coat on, otherwise my paint would begin chipping in no time as well. As I worked away at the chair, I realized the imbeciles before me, who had not only thought neon green was a great alternative to simple wood, had indeed painted their glossy black over a layer of very glossy forest green. Thus, the black did not stick and resulted in more work on my end.

On Saturday and Monday, Garrett and I, with some excellent subbing in by Bonnie, worked away on the chairs. We stripped the paint with biologically safe paint stripper (much less nasty than chemical stripper and safer for the cat, although a bit more elbow grease required), sanded with the palm sander, followed by hand sanding in all the details. Overall, we put in 22.5 man hours on the chairs this weekend and only completely finished 3. Of the other three, two are mostly finished, after some hand sanding and one is half done.

This is us working in the garage on Saturday - it was really cold that day:See the difference in the chair now compared to the 'before' picture above?Here's my crew, hard away at work on Monday. The weather was better, with bits of sun and lots of wind, but overall decent working weather:
I will keep you updated on our progress over the next...um, well probably months. I'd like to finish it by July, which I feel is a realistic goal, since it's taking so long and I have a lot of other things on the go. Seems like if you want to do home renovations, it needs to be your only hobby to get anywhere close to completing it promptly!