Clearly The Fix

Although not a remarkable change to the untrained eye and touch, I finally made some necessary updates to the kitchen. The updates I’m talking about involve my friend water-based Minwax Polycrylic. Hello there, pretty.

At just $10 from Home Depot, this inexpensive update will help my kitchen shelving and DIY’ed island table endure some real wear and tear if I decide to get rowdy with my casserole dishes. There isn’t a lot to see, since I’m writing about a process and product that’s semi-glossy and as transparent as can be, but I’ll tell you that I had a really swell application experience, if that counts for anything.

The open shelves that I installed in place of the cabinets get ragged on daily as dishes and colanders and mixing bowls and glasses move around. When they were painted last winter, I did make the effort to seal in the work with a coat of spray gloss but I hadn’t been confident in it as a long-term sealant. It was the middle of winter and my ventilation was limited (I sprayed in the garage with the door open, which was tolerable, but I questioned what my results would be if I used a product with a longer dry time in sub-freezing temperatures). Now it’s warmer, so I took advantage of that and got wild with Poly on the deck. A simple one day project (that really only took about 45 minutes total without dry time). Sort of sounds like Poly has taken on a female persona. Maybe I’ve had too much coffee today.

A fresh coat of the water-based poly on each shelf yielded pure shininess, and the surface seems substantially more durable both to the touch and in appearance; maybe you can tell based on this shiny, shiny photo:

The kitchen island had actually never been painted officially (shame shame on me); I had only primed it over the winter to seal it up a little bit until I decided on a paint color for the whole base (still undecided). Primer was a little less forgiving when it came to spaghetti sauce and ice cream and coffee stains, so the time had come to give it what it really needed, which was a nice fresh coat of white paint and a glossy topcoat to seal the deal.

Check out this Before + After. Same camera, same table, higher level of semi-glossy perfection.

Before:

After:

Yay? Yay. All glossy surfaces wipe clean with mucho ease, and I don’t have to be so uptight about the dings and the nicks and the bangs that are inevitable when I’m thrashing around the kitch.

P.S. Once upon a time I heard some great things about an alternative and fume-free product called Safepoly but couldn’t find it anywhere I looked; if you know where I can find it, let a girl know.