From Trash to Treasure - part 3

Before & After of Sanding

Ready for a day of adventure, research and paint fumes? Well you're in luck. That's how things are going for me at the moment. Welcome back to my journey of re-purposing a set of cabinet doors. Where we left off in Part 2, I shared my process in getting the doors prepped and ready for paint. 


When in doubt, double check 
With the doors sanded, dusted, and cleaned so that they were free of any debris that might disrupt the painting process, I had another look at collection of inspirational images I had for this project. I knew that I wanted to do something celestial but thought it best to refine what I was aiming to portray. After a bit of thought and roaming the internet, I narrowed things down to doing a bit of a homage to vintage and antique star charts. Finding several images

Top center Star Chart chosen as rough map for project

that I felt fit the bill, including an image of an antique star chart originally created in Korea, I took the time to look at similarities. All of the ones that I was looking at had a common theme of having the Milky Way represented by this beautiful organic ribbon of stars that went through a section of the map with no definite shape. There was also, of course, the use of lines to suggest the path of the moon along with the suggestion of constellations. Choosing one of the maps for a basic templet,  I made sure to remind myself not to stress about having everything in exactly the same position as my reference. That was certainly going to be something that I would probably need to remind myself through most of this, or at least some sort of mantra of "Don't worry, the process is an adventure". 

Before & After base coat painted

Preparing for the next step
With my mind made up, reference selected and plan in place, I was ready to proceed. First step in this would be making sure I had the materials I needed. Low and behold, I was actually missing something. The perfect shade for the background. Though I have plenty of various paints that I have in my collection, I actually did not have the right shade of blue that I wanted to use as the base coat. So off to the local Home Depot I went and acquired a can of Rust-oleum's 2x Ultra Cover in a Satin Midnight Blue. Of course before I could start the painting process, first came masking the doors. Using my widest roll of painters tape, I worked on masking off the section of the doors I didn't want to get hit with the base coat of paint. Readjusting a few times, I eventually was able to get the doors ready for their first blast of color.

Become one with the paint

Start of the painting process
(From Left to Right) Roughing in the Milky Way,
pencil in constellation points, & painting initial
constellation points

Once the base coat was on, I returned to looking at my reference to see what I was going to be doing next. I figured that my best bet would be the gesturing in of the Milky Way. Luckily I had just the right paint for what I was going to use - a bit of Ralph Lauren metallic silver paint. It's supposed to be one of those paints that adds a subtle silver iridescence to other paints and lighten them up a bit but I decided to use it straight. Originally with a broad brush before going in with napkins and making it more organic. I knew I needed to work quickly since the paint would get to a point where it would be already nearly dried to do anything with. 

Making sure I was satisfied with how it came out, I let it dry before arming myself with a white color pencil. Looking at what I had then at the image I was referencing, I lightly marked in some of the constellations between the doors and some other lines for myself as points of reference so I could go in with my other paints.  As soon as I painted in the main points for the constellations that I put in, I couldn't help but have a feel of enjoying how the doors were coming along. 

To be continued...