Bed painting

Putting paint on stuff is one of those things I find calming and therapeutic, so after stress-painting my couch frame blue, I decided to haul off and paint this particular bed frame as well.  I ended up painting it a boring white (reasons below).  If you don't get too close, it looks pretty nice!  

(Actually, it doesn't look too bad even if you do get close,
but I'm not a perfectionist painter, by any means).

 

Why paint this particular bed frame?  There's the typical answer: we've had it for 30-ish years; it's survived multiple children, and while it's a sturdy piece of furniture, it has emerged from the child-rearing years slightly the worse for wear.  

There's also a ickier psychological-bug related reason.  [Gross bug stuff is coming in this paragraph: feel free to skip it if you're squeamish].  The bedbug saga we lived through in recent times continues to wig me out, and this particular bed was not well-suited for post-bedbug serenity.  Bedbugs leave tiny black dots of poop, which blend in well with the markings of unpainted wood.  This means I've been more apt both to miss new infestations of bed bugs, but also to think I'm seeing new infestations when they're not there.  Not a calming situation.  Moreover, the design of this particular bed deliberately had lots of opening between slats, and extra screw/bolt holes to allow different configurations of heights, and that led to lots and lots of hiding places for the buggers and their nasty little egg sacs.  So, even before painting I did a bunch of carpentry stuff:  using wood putty to fill holes, sanding, and adding an extra set of headboard/footboard slats.  I was fortunate (?) that Nelson destroyed another bed just like this one, so I had slats of just the right size at the ready.  I haven't eliminated all the hiding holes, because bedbugs are the undisputed world champions at hide-and-seek, but I've reduced the number of places I feel compelled to shine lights into, so this is good for my head.  Also, adding a new slat into a space where there used to just be a space means that pillows and such are less likely to fall off the bed. 

The second slat down in this footboard is new;
I added it to reduce the amount of hiding space for unwanted buggy guests.  

[Icky stuff is done].

The next step, after puttying, sanding, and adding a new board, was to find paint.  I guess a purist would use glossy furniture paint, but the only such paints I had in the house were dark colored, which was not what I wanted in this situation at all.   Instead, I decided to take a chance with some paint the previous owners had left behind -- a mostly empty can of white primer+paint intended for interior walls.  There was only an inch or two of this left in the can, and when I first opened it up, I was worried it had already solidified.  But it was still usable.  In fact, my initial worry that the paint had outlived its usefulness convinced me that I ought to use it up now, before it did solidify into worthlessness.   

I lucked out and had almost exactly the right amount for the job.  When I was all done,  I used a spatula* to scrape the remaining paint out of the can into a jelly jar, and I figure I have about 1/3 of a cup left for touch-ups.  Is that perfect or what?

[* A year or so ago, I found a really lovely spatula in a "FREE" pile and brought it home, 

only to decide that I had two perfectly good kitchen spatulas already.  But then I realized 

that having a dedicated paint spatula is a wonderful way to conserve paint, and so that spatula 

now lives in the basement with the paint brushes and such.  Highly recommend]

So, now I have a bed that feels "new" to us, which is pleasant.  And also, I want to go crack open all those other cans of paint and pour them into glass jars, so that I know what I might turn to next when I need paint for a random project.  (I'm guessing the next project will be building a curio shelf for cows, but who knows?)