How and How Long:
- Strip and Prime: The first thing is to strip the old paint and prime the surface. I disassembled the chairs and took a paint removal disc mounted to my angle grinder to remove the paint (sandpaper and/or chemical paint stripper will work just as well). I then used my random orbital sander to smooth the grinder marks left behind and to sand between coats of primer.
- Painting: At the point I had decided to post this, I had already painted the zebra chair, but it's pretty straight forward. I painted three coats of Krylon gloss white paint then masked off and cut the stripes using images found on the web as reference. I then painted three coats of Krylon gloss black and removed the mask and painted three coats of Krylon crystal clear gloss.
I then reassembled the chair and moved on to the leopard chair.
- Painting Part 2: I took the already primed parts and painted them with a base coat of gloss white followed by gloss pumpkin orange keeping in mind that the belly of a leopard is white and various shades of yellow/orange/brown up to the spine. I layered gloss khaki and gloss equestrian and gloss sun yellow and some more pumpkin orange until I was happy with the colors and gradations, there was also a little speckling where the paint had built up on the rim of the can and spilled off on to the parts, but I like the looked and it helped with the overall effect
- Leopard Spots: I neglected to get photos of this step, but what I did was cut some holes in some heavy paper (you could use acetate also) like a shopping bag about an inch and a half to two inches for the spots. Then holding the mask a couple of inches away from the surface, I sprayed the gloss equestrian through the hole, this was done to confine the spray pattern to where I wanted it. I then took some more paper and cut 2 to 3 small elongated holes in an arc to go around the perimeter of the equestrian spots. Using gloss black, I went around each spot, loosely following my reference photos. I worked back and forth between the two pieces so as not to work on wet paint and smearing it and I used three different masks for the same reason as the paint builds up on the mask, so I would set one aside to dry as I used the others this also helps with the randomness.
- The Finish: At this point I used Krylon crystal clear gloss and applied three coats, allowed to dry and reassembled the chairs, I then applied two more coats on the seats and backs and the arms of the chairs as these areas would see the most use.
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