Waaay back in this post, I built a small deck on the front of my house. Concealed in a planting bed, the deck offers us a place to sit, relax and watch the kids play out front.
I can’t believe it’s been two years already.
Two years.
Two years since I bought some Adirondack chairs to go on that deck. And two years they have sat, unpainted, in my storage shed.
While I relaxed in a resin chair.
I think the problem was the hassle of painting something with so many surfaces. Under this, between that…like a whole weekend of letting a coat dry so you could flip the chair and start on another side.
All that times two coats…equals forever.
Paint Tools and Supplies
Enter the Black & Decker Airless Paint Sprayer (Lowe’s P/N 369966). At $69 it was more economical than the other brands and with dadand’s experience with Black & Decker tools, I sensed there would be some chairs to plop my tired butt into by end of day.
I thought the airless sprayer would cut my painting time down to an hour.
(Self-imposed) challenge accepted.
A trip to the Lowe’s paint counter resulted in some Valspar Ultra for exteriors—which is paint and primer together as one, but I liked the “Ultimate Weather Defense” on the label.
I also picked up a 10’x20’ drop cloth to protect my driveway from spills and overspray.
Let’s Paint
Make sure you get a drop cloth if you are going to spray paint. Whatever size you think you need, get double, as you might end up draping it from a wall and covering a floor. I’ve dodged wind gusts that way by painting in my carport—sort of a mini paint booth effect. Hold it down with heavy stuff, like bricks or children over the age of four. (Nah, just use bricks).
Here’s the chair. Ready for some color.
I thought I’d get all fancy and place the chair on these little painting teepees so I could get to the bottom of the legs…
But I just figured it would be easier to flip the chair over, paint the bottom, then flip it upright.
My Black and Decker Airless Sprayer. It came with two nozzles—one for a fan spray pattern and one for a round pattern. Also a hole to draw paint right from the can for bigger jobs and a mixing container so you can measure and dilute heavier materials. Or just guess the dilution rate and use it to make margaritas once you’re sitting on your awesome-looking deck chair.
What I liked about this sprayer is the genius design feature of having a lid to fill the paint cup on the side. You can lay this thing down and fill ‘er up.
The Valspar Ultra was some pretty thick stuff. And I’ve used similar hand-held airless sprayers in the past—you will have to dilute most latex paint in order to shoot it. I used the Flood Floetrol latex paint additive (Lowe’s P/N 41589) to thin the paint. You can see my bottle looks dusty as I always seem to have some on hand—it works great!
I set the dial indicator on the back of the sprayer to “8” as the manual stated the thicker the paint, the higher the number…yes, I read the manual. I know…my “dad card” is in jeopardy here, sorry to let you other dads down.
Here’s a stab at the bottom. Looking good. Sprayed real nice.
…until here. See that big splatter down the middle of this shot. The sprayer just puked a bit of paint…
It was only in a spot on the back of the chair. I could live with that. And in defense of the Black and Decker Airless Sprayer, I was nearly out of paint. Note to Self: watch for low paint.
Well, that made quick work of both chairs, top and bottom. And every nook and cranny in between.
After an hour in the sun on the driveway, I moved the chairs back to the deck.
They look great.
Total time: 2 Years, 1 hour.
Two years of dreading having to paint all the ins and outs of those chairs, then an hour to do it after a short trip to Lowe’s.
Seriously, I literally had about an hour of work from start to completion. There was about 20 minutes to prep with the drop cloth, paint dilution and general hem-hawing around looking at what I was gonna do; 20 minutes of actual painting for two coats inclusive of some flash time for the first light coat to dry and then adding some paint to the cup once it was low; and finally about 20 minutes to clean up the paint gun, drop cloth and put everything away.
The chairs look great, and I was very happy with the sprayer and coverage of the Valspar Ultra.
Now time for that margarita.
