Restore Along Part 21: Ready to Paint!

Welcome back to our Restore Along with Julia, featuring Tulip & Jill! Julia has been hard at work preparing Jill for a new coat (and then some) of paint. This will be a practice run for Tulip’s final makeover! In case you missed last week’s progress, here is a link to catch up:

Previous Post: Read Restore Along Part 20 Here

With Jill masked and sanded, one last errand before painting is buying the paint! Today Julia is excited and apprehensive as she ventures back across the bridge to buy enough Soul Red Metallic paint for her practice run. The assistant store manager recognizes her from when she was in the shop three weeks ago to get a quote.

Of the two sets of paint initially considered, Julia decides on PPG’s better quality of paint. Soul Red Metallic requires two different layers of red paint, and Julia buys four ounces of each. The assistant manager reduces them for the paint sprayer in the shop, saving Julia the trouble, and gives her a printout of the instructions for using this particular paint.

She also buys a good quality (but not the most expensive) clear coat and fast-drying hardener. A full quart of clear coat is way more than she needs for a couple of Featherweights, but she will use it on other things, too. Julia also picks up a gallon of lacquer thinner for cleaning out the spray gun. Julia already has a new can of self-etching light gray primer for aluminum that she will use, so her paint buying errand is done!

While she is out, she also wants to buy a Lazy Susan to make it easy to turn and paint all sides of a part. She first stops at a church-run thrift store, and one of the young girls working there today doesn’t seem to know what a Lazy Susan is! Fortunately, the other girl on staff both knows what a Lazy Susan is and remembers seeing one on the truck they are still unloading in the back. She leaves and comes right back with a lightweight Wilton, which typically would be used for cake decorating, but Julia thinks it will be sturdy enough for the task. She scores the Wilton for just $2!

For good measure, Julia hits up a few more thrift stores to see if she can find a second Lazy Susan, but with no luck. She will need a second one - one for Tulip and one for Tulip’s extension bed - when the time comes. For now, she will keep her eyes open.

Back home, Julia does a little more cleanup, and a quick tack cloth wipe down on Jill. She reattaches the throat plate and taped the bed screws in place. 

All that’s left is for Julia to set up her spray booth and give Jill one final wipedown before she applies the first coat of primer.

See you next week when we’ll see Julia apply the first coat of paint! 

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