This is Holy Week at church, which means that we’re just a few days away from Easter! What does this mean? It means that we’re gearing up to celebrate Christ’s rising from death. We’ve just gone through the season of Lent where we keep things kind of low-key and somber. But now we have Christ dying for our sins and being raised to sit at the right hand of the Father. Alleluia!

What this also means is that we have been preparing to decorate the church for Easter, too. How? By getting involved in a large woodworking project, of course! This time, though, it was Dave who was tasked with this project. I almost got out of it, but then being the dummy that I am, I actually volunteered to do the painting for Dave. *sigh*

See how happy he was to be working on this project! He decided to use MDF to build these along with some molding and wood trim.

This is what they looked like in the first stage. Brandon, our fearless Choir Director and Dictator of Church Decorating, wanted three different sizes: 3′, 4′ and 5′.

They are finished! At least, Dave’s part was finished. There was one little misunderstanding in this project. Dave didn’t realize that Brandon wanted SIX of these… so there was a bit of a scramble at the end to get it all done, but they are DONE!

Actually, it was a good thing that Dave only made three of these at a time. I didn’t have a whole lot of room (or good light) to paint these at it was. Here they are in the finishing department. Typically when I’m working on things I am standing over my table, which is well-lit. The other side of my table, not so much.

Here they are after the first coat of primer. MDF really sucks up the paint so I knew from the start that it would require at least two coats of primer. There was one factor that I knew about, but I don’t think that anybody else really realized: I suck at painting. Seriously. That’s why I prefer to stain wood projects… it’s much easier to get a nice finish. Painting… nope.

I had to laugh at myself as I was working on these pedestals. The tallest pedestal is 5′ so I can see the top since I’m 5’10”. It wasn’t until I was applying the first coat of primer that I realized there were some holes that needed to be filled under the top lip. I hadn’t seen it because I hadn’t really bent down to look. I figured that there are enough short people in the world that the underside of this top will definitely be seen. So, I had to fix that before applying the second coat of primer.

After that, though, it was time to add color! There was a bit debate about what color to use. We wanted to go with something light, but not anything that would clash with the white flowers and yellow accents that would be used. I thought I had picked a good color. It was called Fluffy Biscuit:

In the can it looked like a vanilla latte. I was always very thirsty when painting with this color. I took the smaller pedestal with me to choir practice last week to see how it looked in the sanctuary. YIKES! It suddenly turned into a pedestal made of butter. Seriously. Fluffy Biscuit turned into Creamy Butter. Not Good.

So, the Dictator of Church Decorating ran to the store the next day to pick out another color. He bought two that he thought might work. I had to laugh because the first one was the exact same color that I had picked, but because it was a different brand it had a different name. The second one was called Tea with Cream. That’s the one we went with.

So this past weekend I did a marathon painting session to paint the first set with the new color. Once those were done we switched them out with the last three so that I could get those painted in time to have them at church by Wednesday night. It was close, and I’m not impressed with my painting job, but it’s done. We’ll just keep people from looking at them up close.

See, they don’t look too bad from a distance. Besides, once Easter is over if Brandon wants to repaint them or touch them up he can have at it. Personally, I hope to never have to paint anything like this again unless it’s for myself or I have oodles of time to let my perfectionist personality take its time.

Happy Easter!