How I painted our crib PINK

You guys know that Pinterest has been like crack to me since we bought our house, right? When I saw this pin of a hot pink crib combined with blue walls I was totally sold on painting our old crib. We got our crib on Craigslist for a whopping $40 and I never even had to repaint it for Truman. But after he used it for almost 2 years, the white paint was chipping a bit and even before I settled on pink I knew I'd need to repaint it for baby 2.0. But oh, I was dreading the process. But the results? In love.







So does that inspire anyone out there to paint a crib? Would you like to know how I did ours?

The supplies:
-sandpaper
-tack cloth
-Krud Kutter (or some other cleaner--we also like Goop Gone)
-spray primer
-paint of your choice--spray or brush by hand, if you dare
-polyurethane or some other protectant
-drill to remove and then assemble all hardware



Step 1:
I took our already disassembled crib and removed all of the hardware. Totally took pictures of each piece BEFORE I took the hardware off because I knew I'd forget how it was supposed to fit together. Drilling is not my specialty but I'm proud of myself for doing this.


Step 2:
Sand all of the old paint. You don't have to go crazy and sand it all the way off, but just rough it up pretty good and I focused on the chipping parts the most. You are just getting the old paint ready for primer anyway.

Step 3:
Use a tack cloth to remove all of your dust from sanding.

Step 4:
Clean the heck out of the crib. I just rubbed Krud Kutter all over the parts, let it set a bit, then used a damp cloth full of Lysol after that to remove the KK. Then I went over it all once more with a plain damp cloth and allowed it to dry fully. This prep stuff sort of sucked since our Jenny Lind style spindle crib has a lot of nooks and crannies.

Step 5:
Prime the crib. I chose to use a spray paint that claimed it had 'great' coverage. I needed two cans just to prime this baby. And it was a flat primer which actually looked kind of cool when it was finished. Let the primer dry for 24 hours before moving on, as hard as it is to be patient.


Step 6:
Time to paint! I chose a Behr interior paint in semi-gloss finish (Fuschia Kiss, if you must know the color). I simply could NOT fathom painting it all by hand and so I used our Wagner HVLP paint gun like a boss. Nate had to show me how to use it but once he did, I was all over this part. I only got a quart of paint and the lady at Home Depot assured me that would be more than enough for a crib. But alas, it was BARELY enough because sprayers use a lot more paint than doing it by hand. I ended up spraying one entire coat with the gun, flipping each piece over after the front would dry. Then I went back over it for a second coat with my brush, unfortch. There were just so many angles and round parts that the gun couldn't totally handle it all. In fact, there were parts that needed a third coat of pink paint, done by hand with a brush. I'm never very good at waiting for the paint to totally dry between coats, but I forced myself to wait about 2 hours before I started at it again. The gun did help a lot and is SO fast, but just by doing 1-2 coats by hand it did end up taking me much longer than I thought.









Step 7:
Because this is a crib and therefore something that I anticipate my child gnawing on as she ages, I wanted to do an extra step to protect my paint job. At first, I splurged on buying the spray can version of water-based polyurethane. But maybe it was too cold in the garage the day I did this but it did not work. It was all bubbly and gross and nearly ruined my beautiful brush strokes on the crib! So I returned those three cans and settled for doing the poly by hand. Sigh. I ended up doing 3 coats on the tops and side pieces, but I skipped the vertical spindles. I figure that if the pink paint chips a bit, oh well. But the bars on top I did go the extra mile to keep pink and pretty. Since my Behr paint was already in semi-gloss, the poly didn't really make it a lot shinier or anything. But I'm hoping it does help protect it from scratches. We shall see.


Step 8:
Add all of the hardware back to the dry crib. We waited 48 hours for the poly to totally dry before doing this and I did ask my husband for help this time around with the drill. Then he assembled the crib for me in the nursery, and voila!!


We have ourselves a pink, shiny, new-ish crib. Iloveitsomuch. Thank you, Pinterest, yet again.