Harold and Maude - Shabby Chair Pair

I asked for help naming this pair on our facebook page.   If you haven't joined us there, you need to get on in!  The conversation and the ideas that are shared are awesome!  I will for sure be using some of the other names that were suggested, but you all voted and Shannon's suggestion won out!

I thought it was interesting that nearly all of the suggestions were a man and woman pair.  I would not have thought of that.  As you might have noticed that most of the pieces I name are women's names.

The original reason I asked for help in naming these chairs was because they made me so agitated that I had a hard time wanting to call them anything other than &*@&# and #*%&@!

I decided to try something I'd read about a few places, a petroleum jelly resist.  The idea here is that you paint one (or two in my case) coats of paint on, apply some petroleum jelly (Vaseline) to the places that you want left alone, let that dry and then apply your next color.  The petroleum jelly is supposed to protect the first coat of paint in the areas that it is applied, so that when you rub it away you are left with places that were untouched by the last coat of paint.

Well, I guess when you live in a place where the humidity is around 90% all winter long, petroleum jelly never does dry out.  So after waiting over night for it to dry I decided to paint over it anyway (what else was I going to do?)

Then I waited for that coat of paint to dry and started rubbing off the jelly with a paper towel.  WHAT. A. MESS!  It smeared the last coat of paint (the black in case you're wondering) all over the place, sort of mixing with it and it was coming off where I didn't want it to come off and no matter how much I rubbed it with a a paper towel I couldn't seem to get all of the jelly off of the chairs!

After several rounds and far more paper towels than I'd like to admit, I finally got most of the jelly off, but ended up not waxing them because there is a still a very fine film over them that feels a lot like wax.  I didn't want to push my luck with this cranky pair!

I am happy with how they eventually came out, even if it isn't at all what I had in mind!  I did learn an important lesson though.  Petroleum Jelly has officially been banned from my workshop!

Maude and Harold are certainly one of a kind.  You won't be seeing a finish like this from me EVER again.

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Maude and Harold are for sale.  See my Portfolio and Available page for details.

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I will be sharing at: 
Primp