Tag: painting

Another Career Path Option Down the Drain

I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I have learned that being a painter is not an employment option. In fact I suck at painting. The funny part about it is that I actually enjoy painting. Nothing brightens or freshens up a room better than a fresh coat of paint. Paint is also a fairly inexpensive way to update a room or house. The caveat is only if the only thing that gets painted is the walls and ceiling.

My problem is that when I paint I get paint everywhere, the walls, ceiling, floor and me. I’m really good at getting paint on me, every part of my body. I always start off with the best intentions, I am so careful; I remove all of the switch plate covers for the outlets and light switches. I tape the window, door and floor trims. I cover the floor with plastic and newspaper and still get paint on window trim, doors and door trim, and oh how I get paint on the floors. Mitch says, “It’s a gift. You definitely have a gift.” He says that after I cut myself, fall off something, like maybe a ladder or get paint in places that any other normal person would never slop paint on.

I decided to paint the living room to brighten it up and make it look very fresh. I bought two gallons of ceiling paint and two gallons of wall paint just to make sure I had enough. The first mishap happened when I was painting the ceiling the paint roller slipped and whacked the ceiling fan. I had to quickly climb the ladder rag in hand to wipe off the paint before it left a big white smear across the fan blades. After the ceiling was done I cleaned up the roller and paint tray.

The walls came next and that is when true disaster after disaster happened. I thought that if I cut in the top of the walls, window and door trim and the base of the wall close to the floor all the way around the room I would save time moving the ladder around. I still had to go back and start over moving the ladder around the room to get the roller up high on the walls. At first I was doing well, no paint slops, I started to relax a bit and that is when it happened. I climbed up the ladder, lost my balance and fell backwards off the ladder knocking the ladder one way and I went the other way paint roller in hand and across the couch and onto the floor. Luckily the couch was covered in a plastic drop cloth. But in true Susan fashion, I ended up with a nice bruise on my hip.

After that it was all downhill, I bumped the roller against the ceiling, which means I have to go back with a brush and ceiling paint to correct all of the paint splatters. The roller would drip and a paint blob fall across the window trim or the door trim. Paint droplets would mysteriously appear on the floor where a second ago the floor was covered in newspaper. It was like a gust of wind had magically whipped through the room just across the floor moving the newspaper away exposing bare bamboo. I ended up looking like I’d been dipped in a paint can. I had paint on my hands, my jeans and shirt, and even in my hair. I didn’t just have paint down the front of my jeans I also had paint on my butt. I have this ability to bend over to paint low and back into the wall I just painted. I guess it truly is a gift.

It’s not like I’m totally graceless nor have no other skills, painting is just not one of them. The funny part about this is that Mitch hates painting, but is exceptionally neat when painting. He never gets paint anywhere but on the walls that he wants to paint. I’ve even tried bribery but it doesn’t work. There is nothing he wants that will entice him to paint with or for me. I think I hate him.

Wall Check

This afternoon I was doing my weekly wall check for slobber bombs and there were a lot as usual, there were even a couple way up high on the wall. I thought to myself, “what does Orso do, stand on his back legs put his front paws on the wall and sling his head around to whip a slobber bomb as high on the wall as he can?” Is this a game with him that he keeps score with Charlie over, “I can shoot a slobber bomb higher than you?” I sprayed the Fantastic antibacterial cleaner over each dried gross blob and scrubbed them off the wall.

I stood back and surveyed my handiwork and noticed the walls now have clean spots where the slobber bombs were, standing out starkly against the rest of the walls. This means that in order to not have lighter colored spots dotted around the room I need to wash all of the walls and clean off a year’s worth of pipe tobacco smoke, dust and god knows what else. I filled a bucket of water and cleaner, grabbed the step ladder and washed all of the walls in the living room. I stood back to admire my work again, and decided that no amount of soap and water were going to improve the look of the walls.

That means only one thing, time to paint the walls. Since I have to paint the walls, I might as well freshen up the room with a new color, a new look. If I’m going to go with a new color on the walls I need to spend some quality time at Lowes and Home Depot staring at paint chips for hours, searching through the myriad of colors and hues in my quest for the perfect shade. For some this may seem to be a chore, but to me this is one of my most fun things to do. Every time we go to Lowes or Home Depot I wander off to the paint department and load up on scads of paint chips. Even if I have no painting project planned I can stand there for hours, just looking at all of colors, thinking about which room I would paint with the different shades. It makes Mitch crazy, when I come home with an armload of paint chips and paint books. Mitch’s idea of painting a room any color other than white is off white. He’s very adventurous don’t you think?

In order to spare Mitch the agony of living through another painting project, I just won’t tell him. I’ll go to Lowes early when he’s at work, stock up on paint chips and stick them all over the wall in the living room to see which one I like best. Then I’ll head back over and buy my paint and paint the room before he gets off work. It will be a surprise and I can guarantee you it won’t be white.

And It Just Doesn’t End

Two coats of gray primer and three coats of red paint just to paint a door and I’m not sure that three coats of paint will be enough to give that finished look.  Seriously?  If I had known that red was such a difficult color to work with, I would have gone with blue or green or anything else, maybe purple.  A simple one day project has taken all week and I’m not sure it’s really done yet.  I’m waiting for the third coat of paint to dry.

After the second coat of paint had dried I peeled off the tape protecting the glass panes and the door knob.  That went badly as well.  I should have used Frog tape, but no I used the regular blue that has worked in the past.  The blue tape hung on to the red paint with great tenacity.  I peeled off huge chunks of red paint on the metal strips between the window panes.  This meant that I had to make another trip to Lowes to buy tiny paint brushes to touch up the flubs.  I have started to doubt my sanity at attempting this project. 

I have only painted one side of the three doors mind you.  I still have the back side of the doors to paint.  Today is Sunday one week ago on last Sunday I started this insanity.  Guess what, vacation is officially over, tomorrow I get to go back to work, who hoo. 

At least Mitch has had a productive project laden vacation.  He gutted the bathroom, ripped out the tile floor, floor below and the subfloor in four days and in the last two he has re-installed the subfloor and floor.  He’s now ready to go buy the backer board for the tile and tile the floor, which he’ll get done this week.  Me, I’ll probably have to apply another coat of paint. 

A wadded up newspaper and a match is looking awfully good right now.

Another DIY Project Gone Horribly Wrong

Another stay at home working vacation for us.  This one is to redo a recent remodel, which sucks.  We gutted the second bathroom off the kitchen four years ago.  We removed the old ugly gold enamel cast iron tub and institutional sink and replaced them with a corner shower stall and cute pedestal sink.  It looked great, but the shower started to leak so we have to rip it out and fix the leak.  This has entailed ripping out the shower and the tile floor to see how much of the floor underneath the tile was ruined.  Most of the floor was water soaked so Mitch has had to tear out the floor and a large section of subfloor, leaving a huge hole in the floor looking down into the basement.  What fun redoing a remodel.

While he is immersed in the redo I thought that this would be the perfect time to do some of my pet projects that need to be done and haven’t had the time to accomplish.  One of the projects is a quick and easy one day spiff up.  I wanted to paint the three metal entry doors a new color to brighten up the look of the house.  Simple easy project, pick out a color, buy the paint and paint the door, right?  Leave it to me to turn a simple three step process into a four day ordeal. 

After weeks of looking at paint chips, I finally decided on a red hue.  I bought the paint in a quart size can, playing it safe just in case the color didn’t look as good on as it did on the chip.  Sunday afternoon after I got home from Lowes with paint in hand, I covered the floor with newspapers, for the drips. There are always drips when I paint.  I taped off the door knobs and the little strips between the window panes in the kitchen door.  I will never have windows with the little panes of glass because taping off the little panes was a pain in the neck.  I was finally ready to paint.  I started with the kitchen door and all of its’ little window panes.   I stirred the paint again for good measure and dipped the brush in the can and spread the first coat on.  It was horrible.  The painted surface looked like I had used my hand and was finger painting.  Large streaks of the unpainted door below showed through.  I couldn’t believe it; I had never had that happen before.  I thought maybe because the kitchen door hadn’t been painted before it would look better after it dried and I applied a second coat.

I decided to paint the second door and see how it looked.  The other two doors have had three different colors on them so I was sure that they would look much better.  I was wrong.  Both the second and third doors looked as bad as the first one.  The only thing I could do was to wait for them to dry and hope a second coat would fix everything. 

Monday (day two) morning came and the paint was still tacky.  I couldn’t believe it, this has never happened before.  I grabbed the half full can of paint and headed off to Lowes for some help and guidance.  I explained the problem, what the doors look like and what could I do to fix it.  Those two women couldn’t have been more helpful.  They asked lots of questions and explained that red paint had lots of pigment in it and could account for some of the problem and the brand of paint I had picked out was not very good for coverage.  I wished that had been explained to me the day before when I bought it.  It was decided that I needed to prime the doors with gray primer because gray primer works best with red paint and switch brands to Valspar, which I’ve always had good luck with anyway.  The paint department manager didn’t think I would have to apply paint stripper and start all over.  After much discussion we decided that I could probably get by with just painting the primer over the top of the tacky painted surface.  They refunded the full price of the half used can of paint and of course the only size can in stock was a gallon, my usual luck, but they only charged me the price of a quart.  I went home and went about applying a coat of primer, hoping that this was just a little set back.  No, not my luck.

I applied the gray primer and it looked as bad as or worse than the red paint below.  The brush grabbed the paint and left blobs and smears all over the door.  A wadded up piece of paper and a match in the corner is starting to look really good right now.  And just because I’m a glutton for punishment, I decided to paint one of the other doors to see if it would turn out any better.  It didn’t.  This time I stopped at two.  I’m not a total masochist.  I decided this would be a good time to mow the yard.  That I can do without it turning into a major ordeal. 

Two hours later the paint was dry so I thought why not put another coat of paint on to see if there was any improvement.  What did I have to lose, what’s one more coat for the paint stripper to have to take off if it didn’t work?   Surprise there is a god.  The second coat covered the first very nicely.  It looked like what primer should have looked like.  Maybe there is hope. 

Tuesday (day three) I wake up ready to paint a second coat of primer on the remaining door so I can apply the real color.  Tuesday morning, it’s also only forty five degrees outside, too cold to paint a metal door.  I have to wait for the sun to warm up the metal before I can apply any paint.  Waiting sucks.