Sure, I'll Be Glad to Paint That...part 3

Wednesday proved fairly productive on the project.

Step 5
- Sand all parts with 320 grit paper using the power sander.
- This took about an hour and yielded pretty good results, it was enough to smooth everything up and prep for the top coat.

Step 5a
- Wipe everything down...again
- This step took much less time this time around, I knew what to do and there was less dust because the finer sand paper took much less off.

Step 6
- Paint all parts with Valspar Dark Kettle Black Satin paint from Lowe's.
- This was the part I'd been trying to get to for 2 days. The first, thick coat took me about 2 hours and yielded fairly good results. I burned through about 3/4 of the quart of paint I bought. I am hopeful that what remains will be sufficient to do touch up work and avoid having to buy another $12 quart that I'll only use a tiny bit of.
- Most of the surfaces that will be visible when the tables are re-assembled will be getting a light second coat to deal with any brush strokes that revealed the Kilz 2 underneath or just look bad. I was able to do a second coat on the top side of one of the shelves last night and it looked very good with a minimum of effort - hopefully the rest will go that well.
- I used an "economy" 3" brush (for all paint types) on this step. I did use a sponge brush for some of the touch up and to get into some smaller spaces. They seem to yield similar results, I'm not really sure it would have mattered which I used on the whole project.

Today I will re-assemble the tables (which I hope will go fairly quickly, but I'm not holding my breath) and then do the partial second coat on visible surfaces as needed. Hopefully by bedtime tonight they'll be done and just needing time to dry...we'll see how it goes.