July 4th, 2006
paint update
Thanks for the all the painting advice! Unfortunately, Beanie’s GREAT advice didn’t come in time…we are now the proud owners of two orange plastic pans and two shitty brushes. (But we have some good rollers, so it’s all good. We also have some edging tools–one for straight edges and one for corners. I’m not sure how I feel about those; they don’t seem to hold much paint and leave lines.)
Thus far we have taped off and primed all the walls in our living area. (Actually, we need to tape a couple more spots, that we didn’t bother with today.) Eventually, we’ll also prime two walls in the bedroom and one wall in the office. The other walls will remain as they are, since they are the non-dirty and non-spackled walls.
Tomorrow, the plan goes, we will continue to paint. We have a nice sandstone-colored paint for most of the walls and a gorgeous brick red for two accent walls. I’m pretty excited about the accent walls, actually–one is the wall facing the front door, and the other is the wall just through the office door. They always say to paint accent walls across from main entrances, so that’s what we’re doing! It’s an experiment, as LQ said, and hopefully it will be a successful one.
Sadly, I didn’t take Dave’s advice and buy latex gloves; my hands are all covered in white now. As nice as it would be not to have paint on my hands, though, I am not sure I can paint in gloves–I rely too much on the tactile to know if I have paint on a finger or something before I touch something else.
Frankly, I’m still nervous about the whole thing. I don’t know why–the priming went well, and the walls look SO MUCH NICER, even with just the clean white on them, so I shouldn’t be nervous. But I am. What if the colors look bad? What if they don’t go on smoothly and we have spotty or uneven walls? What if, what if, what if?
On the bright side, I didn’t spill anything today. I made a couple of dribbles, but that’s why we have the big plastic sheeting (thanks, Kevin!).




comments
I’m sorry I was so tardy in my painting advice. However, it seems you’re on the right track by going with the taping, priming, and the plastic. Keep up the good work!
But your advice was good, Beanie! In fact, tomorrow I’m going to go buy a good brush to use for cutting in the color tomorrow. Not such a big deal with the primer…much bigger deal with a big red wall.
Painting is fun, cheap, and easy to fix if you hate it or screw up. I find it so theraputic, too — I was touching up for the hell of it on Monday. Have fun!