I don’t fail in my projects often. I stall, I flounder, I re-evaluate… but I don’t often fail.

This project was a monumental, irrevocable, unadulterated failure.

I had planned to transform this:

Into this:

Simple, it seemed. Easy. Piece of cake.

I washed down the laminated doors of the pantry.

I smeared on a product called ESP for preparing surfaces to take paint. Tiles, laminate, metal, anything, without sanding.

Now, I’ve used this product before. Twice. Once many years ago in Melbourne when I painted the ugly dark wood laminate doors and drawer fronts of a gorgeous old 60s kitchen dresser. I wipe it on, wiped it off after 90 minutes, then painted it with a glossy oil based paint.

In Fentonbury I did it on the kitchen cabinets and walls which were all lacquered pine. Wiped it on, wiped it off, undercoated and topcoated in acrylic. This wasn’t as great a success. Perhaps cause the topcoat was acrylic and not oil paint. It chipped. Not too badly.

Then we have this:

Maybe its cause the tin of ESP was old… Maybe its cause I didn’t undercoat (I’m leaning towards that)… but the paint just wiped off! Even after 3 days.

Wayne hated it. Said it was like looking into the abyss when he sat at the kitchen table, why on earth would I put a black wall in a small kitchen.

Well… it seemed like a good idea at the time.

This morning I got up and saw this: 

No doubt about this project…

So, when (if) I find the energy I’ll climb on a chair and start scrubbing the paint off. Should be easy enough.

ha. ha. ha.

z