We’ve now had two weekends full of sunshine and warm weather, and I’ve used both of those weekends to encourage Wyatt and I to get some things done around the house that we can’t do when it’s wintering outside.

(Yes, I just made “wintering” into a new kind of verb. It means, loosely translated from Melissa-speak, “being cold and windy and just plain disagreeable outside, and/or snowing, sleeting, icing, or raining in a cold way.”)

Anyway, a couple weekends ago, Hubs, Mr. Sandman, took the first steps in getting the new headboard for the guest room ready to use. (It came with the dresser we bought on Craigslist.)

He used the palm sander to get most of it, finishing up with regular sandpaper, I think about a 150 grit, but working his way up to 200 maybe, just to make sure it was nice and smooth for me to get a good coat of paint on there.

(Sigh. He’s so good to me).

Sanding just isn’t fun. Neither of us like to do it, but luckily, I can usually pass that job on to him since he doesn’t like painting. On the plus side, he got to use his new shop vac!

Pretty soon though, it was all sanded and ready to prime, after a good cleaning via the shop vac and a good, wet rag.

After the sanding step, it was time to prime.

As usual, we used Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 primer, in the latex version, not the oil based one, simply out of personal preference.

The oil-based one is nice because it cures in a few hours instead of a few days, but I just hate working with oil paints unless I absolutely have to.

Since the headboard has the square trim on it, I painted it like I painted all our panel doors (in this post), starting with the offset parts first.

Then it was time for the rest of the pieces:

So, I gave the headboard two coats of primer and then let it dry to the touch (an hour or so) before moving it into the guest room and propping it up behind the bed to get an idea of what it will look like.

It’s currently a disaster in there, because we’re in the progress of growing up that room a little bit. It’s full of hand-me-down, mis-matched furniture, and since we moved Wyatt’s old chest of drawers in there, we had to rearrange the furniture anyway.

After a week, (curing time for the primer) I gave the primer a light (very light!) sanding to make sure it was super smooth since we’ll be spray painting this. (At least that’s the plan right now.)

I used 220 grit (very fine) and went slow, carefully, and gently to avoid scrapping and sanding off the primer. If a tiny bit comes off, don’t worry, but just try to be careful.

Of course, now that it’s cold and snowy outside, it will be awhile before it’s nice enough to finish painting this guy, but at least he’s ready to go when the time comes! A little head start for the coming weeks, if you will.

Come on spring!

In the meantime, tell me what projects you’re working on, or what projects you want to work on, or what projects you’re putting off until spring? (We have a lot of those!)