A little advice about painting a project

[thesanuts]

I have a table that I was thinking about painting white (currently a dark cherry) to match my bedroom furniture. Its just going to be a side table nothing fancy, and I was wanting to use some paint and stuff a had left over from previous projects and stuff from a friend's garage. I have kilz primer, exterior latex semigloss paint(white), and some minwax waterbased poly. The table doesn't have to be perfect, but i'd like for it to look pretty decent. Here are a few questions I have before I start this project.
1. How is this exterior semigloss latex paint going to react with the poly?
2. How long am I going to have to wait on the latex before i add the poly coat.
3. Can I use automotive sandpaper, say 1500 or 2000 to sand the poly to help get the finish even? Or maybe you can you recommend a grit..

Thats all the questions I can think of right now, oh

4. Can I use a spray gun for the latex, how much thinner should I use?

Thanks for all of you help.

 

[zepe]

When I was a kid I did hand finishing for a custom furniture company in Santa Barbara, CA and we used a lot of lacquer for the final finishes. I used to pour an ounce or two of paint thinner on the cabinet tops, add a little cotton seed oil and sand with an inline sander with 400 grit sand 'wet or dry' paper. Following that I hand rubbed the top down with a rubbing compound similar to Simonize with a little water. The next step was a fine finish rub. I don't remember what it was, but it was about the consistency of sour cream, again with a little water. The last step, if one wanted a satin finish was to lightly rub the top with very fine steel wool. This was done with long strokes, across the full length of the top and with the grain. This involved a lot of elbow grease, but provided a finish that was immaculate.

The paint thinner did not dissolve or soften the lacquer, but helped cut the orange peel from the lacquer and the oil was to keep from cutting too deep. This process will provide a glass like finish, but you may want to paint some test pieces to experiment on.