Painted furniture progress

Hello, friends! I hope you had a lovely weekend. The weather was finally dry here so we spent much of it outdoors. Yesterday afternoon we enjoyed the company of some good friends at a BBQ, and when I got home I took a quick trip to my favorite thrift store for their 50% off sale. As I pulled into the parking lot, I spotted a new cupcake truck, which is exciting enough--but then when I got to the door of the thrift, a girl from the truck was there giving out FREE cupcakes! I'm not kidding you, I thought I might actually be dreaming. I think I've just found out what Heaven will be like for me. :)

On Saturday, I spent quite literally FIVE hours sanding a chair. A chair, not a set of chairs--one small, wooden desk chair. Oh, and I used an electric sander. It was way past ridiculous and well into ludicrous territory. I'm still not totally sure why it took such a darn long time, but I know that was about five times longer than it should have taken. I wanted to paint my little chair on Saturday, but the old paint was chipped so I thought maybe I'd just give it a quick sand to smooth things out. I soon found that there were five, possibly six coats of paint on that little chair, and they were apparently some kind of iron-impregnated paint that is impossible to get off of wood.

Now, around about Hour 3, a smart person would have gone all Cee-Lo Green and said "Forget YOU!" and headed to Home Depot for a quart of paint stripper. My friends, I am not a smart person.

Anyway, after I wasted all Saturday on that silly project, I decided to start painting yesterday morning. In a total impulse buy, I purchased a quart of regular latex paint for this project instead of my normal spray paint. I primed the chair with some red-tinted primer leftover from when we painted our front room red several years ago, and then yesterday afternoon I got the first coat of red paint on and was reminded how much I detest painting furniture with a brush and regular paint. I'm having terrible trouble with drips, try as I might to be careful. It's difficult to get good coverage on the chair's s round stretcher bars so they look terrible. And now I have to let the paint cure for days so that it won't nick and scratch every time I sit in it. I really wish I'd gone with spray paint for this project.

Yesterday while I was waiting for red primer & paint to dry, I quickly sanded and spray-primed my yard sale dresser.

That sanding was much quicker, because the finish was in good shape and all I needed to do was rough it up a bit so the primer would stick. I had intended to use some latex paint in Behr River's Edge

that I have leftover from a cabinet I painted, but now I'm seriously thinking about going the spray paint route for that as well, although I did purchase small foam rollers to make all those wide flat surfaces easier to paint.

If I go with Krylon spray paint, my color options are pretty limited. I can go with Satin Catalina Mist

which I'm not sure I can find easily, or Blue Ocean Breeze

which I've used before and really is a much brighter turquoise than I'm looking for.

Any advice from those of you who have painted furniture before? I'd really like to take advantage of this good weather and my painting mojo and get started on the dresser ASAP so I can reclaim some space in my garage and get the project done. And those pillows I was hoping to sew this weekend? Yeah, that didn't happen.