Only Perfect

So last week I scored a couple of awesome wooden rockers from my neighbor.

Fabulous, no?

I walked by those rockers day after day, and every day I wanted to ask Angel if he was getting rid of them, or wanted to sell them, but I never saw him out there.  I was so worried one day they'd be gone and I'd have to knock my head into the side of a barn -- if there were any around here -- and ask, "Why? Why? Why?"

But then one day Mistah and I were driving by Angel's house when he was out, which saved my fool head. "Hey Angel, you don't want to sell those rockers, do you?" (That was Mistah; I would have said, "Hey, Angel, you do want to sell those rockers, don't you?")

In any case, Angel answered, "You can have them" and walked them down the street to our house before we had parked and gotten out of Subie.

They looked like chipped-paint crap, those rockers, but they were solid and they were true. They just needed some good old-fashioned TLC, Ellie-Style.

First, the sanding:

First one . . .

. . . then both were done.

I went to Home Depot and bought a quart of "Old Vine" paint. Sounds perfect, right?

First coat on one . . .

. . . and then the other, and then second coats on both.

So? Whaddya think?

Sigh. I know; I agree.

The color is just not quite right. There's too much blue and not enough black in that green. They're too light.

I tried to make it work, though. I tried to like them.

A couple of friends came over and checked them out.

"Well, they're not terrible."
"I think you can work with them."
"They're going to age well."

All true, of course. They weren't terrible. But you know what else they weren't? Perfect.

My Dad loved to finish a project and have it come out just exactly the way he wanted it to. He'd measure and saw the last piece of wood to fit into its allotted spot, screw in the final nail, use the level to check for straightness, and deem it finished: "Only Perfect."

That's what I wanted from my rockers. Perfection. Not too much to ask, I don't think. I wanted my rockers to be Only Perfect.

So even though those rockers were carefully and patiently and thoroughly painted with two coats of exterior semi-gloss Old Vine, I went back to Home Depot to get a sample of the next darker color because I clearly had lost what had been my previously 100% successful color-pickin' mojo.

See that? See the new paint on the left arm (well, the left arm if you're the chair) and the back and that one vertical slat?

That's Fresh Pine. That's the color I was after.

So I went back to Home Depot to get more.

And I painted one . . .

. . . and then the second of my new-old fabulous front porch rockers. And you know how they turned out?

Only Perfect.