Project Woes

Ahhh, polyurethane. We have a love/hate relationship. It's usually love, but this weekend it's pure hatred.  Remember my scroll painting I did a while back?  Well, I finally decided to polyurethane it, along with some other projects, this weekend.  I'm sure we could all agree that a little poly makes any project look better, but this is what she did to my painting.

That's actually what it looked like after hours of having a few dumbells on top. I set up my workshop outside yesterday because the weather was so nice and I got started on polyurethaning the backside. Then I took my son to the park while it dried and when I came back, both sides were completely bowed by about 5 inches!! My heart totally sank because I spent a ton of hours painting this thing. My dad's theory is that it shouldn't have been in the sun, but my other project was in the sun and didn't do this. I'll definitely poly in the shade from here on out though! And I'm thinking I might just have to have my dad make a frame for this to get rid of the rest of the bowing.

Not only did the painting bow, but some of the poly leaked onto the front and dried all goopy.

This isn't even the worst of it! I tried taking a razor blade to gently ease it up, but it cut right through all the layers of paint and revealed bare wood. Plan B? My trusty fingernails. I couldn't get all the mess up, so I did the best I could then touched up the paint. I had actually forgotten which paint I used for the background color and used the wrong color, then had to go back and paint over it. And since the chocolate brown was a spray paint, I had to use a brown that I had on hand which was more of a grayish-brown. Yeah, today just isn't a good project day for me!!

After I got the goop up and retouched the paint I put a coat of poly on the front. I'm keeping my fingers crossed as I anxiously await to see what happens.  It seems to look ok as of now, but since there is a slight sheen to the poly, I know it will highlight the imperfections (you can see them on the left in the picture below).

And don't worry, that's just the reflection on the painting and not spilled paint, although that would be my luck!!