Painting
Haven't posted in a good while. Been busy, but mostly just haven't posted. But once again, we're remodeling a room, so here's me posting about it.
This time, it's the dining room. It contained standard new-development beige wall-to-wall carpeting, and -- well, let me rephrase that. It contained what had once been standard beige carpet, but had become, over the years, ratty, disgusting, grey splotchy carpet. I mean really, while my allergy-racked self ain't particularly fond of wall to wall carpeting in any room, in the dining room? That's just a bad idea. I don't care what you do -- the orange juice, coffee, maple syrup, and crumbs are getting into the weave of the thing, no matter how quickly you clean up the spills. And that's just breakfast!
So the carpet had to go. But why now, you ask? Well, 'cause the neighbors cut their trees down.
Perhaps that needs to be explained. We've put off buying window treatments for the room because, a) the yard was shaded enough we could get away with it, and b) we didn't want to buy something we hated to go with the wallpaper we hated, nor did we want to buy something we liked that would go with the room we did not yet have. So buying window treatments, logically, meant pulling up the carpet, painting, putting down bamboo flooring, and installing a ceiling fan. Of course!
Fan's in. That was the easy part, once I got a load-bearing pancake box. Now on to the painting.
First, we peeled the wallpaper. At first, that was a family project -- even Isaac helped! But when the going got tough, I got abandoned. Actually, that was sort of intentional-- Saraah's got a paper to write, and I don't know what chemicals they are that turn wallpaper paste into water, but I'm pretty sure I don't want my not-yet-two-year-old playing with them. And Theo helped a little, but quickly got frustrated and went off to do his summer reading, with which I really can't argue.
Okay, so we got the wallpaper down, the walls washed, sanded, and washed again. All traces of wallpaper were gone, and in many areas, I was down to bare sheet rock. No wallpaper traces remained. This must be fully understood if anything wondrous is to come of the rest of this scree. 'Cause when we put the primer on, things got weird.
We had exposed sheetrock, so we got sheet rock primer. We started priming. And anywhere you hit the same spot twice, like, say, we're you overlapped your roller strokes to try to get an even coat, the stuff you'd just put down peeled right back up again. Worse, even where it didn't, it started to crack as it dried. By the time we'd done a wall and a half, it looked like we lived in a 100 year-old house with original paint. That's really cool when you live in a 150 year old house. Ours is less than 20. Not good.
So back I went to Lowe's, with my can of primer. "Oh," they said, "You didn't wash the walls." Sure did. "Oh," they said, "there's still paint on the walls." This wall has never seen paint in its life. "Oh," they said, "You didn't sand." More thoroughly than I remember sanding the bathroom, and this didn't happen there. "Oh," they said, and kind of scratched their heads. "Well, we can't refund when you used half the can." Well, sure, I used it, but it didn't stay on the walls. Still, I kept my cool and my sense of humor, and they happened to have the Valspar man in at that very moment, so he came over to see what was up. "Oh," he said, and went through the same list again. He finally decided that there was still some very persistent wallpaper glue residue and we should use "Over glossy" primer. Okay, we'll try that. I'm willing to concede that there may have been some residue, because the peeling thing only happened in some places, but the cracking happened everywhere, so I also think there was something wrong with that lot of primer.
Either way, we've (the three eldest members of the household) have just finished priming the entire room with the new primer, and it seems to be staying up fine now. Tonight, we paint!
This time, it's the dining room. It contained standard new-development beige wall-to-wall carpeting, and -- well, let me rephrase that. It contained what had once been standard beige carpet, but had become, over the years, ratty, disgusting, grey splotchy carpet. I mean really, while my allergy-racked self ain't particularly fond of wall to wall carpeting in any room, in the dining room? That's just a bad idea. I don't care what you do -- the orange juice, coffee, maple syrup, and crumbs are getting into the weave of the thing, no matter how quickly you clean up the spills. And that's just breakfast!
So the carpet had to go. But why now, you ask? Well, 'cause the neighbors cut their trees down.
Perhaps that needs to be explained. We've put off buying window treatments for the room because, a) the yard was shaded enough we could get away with it, and b) we didn't want to buy something we hated to go with the wallpaper we hated, nor did we want to buy something we liked that would go with the room we did not yet have. So buying window treatments, logically, meant pulling up the carpet, painting, putting down bamboo flooring, and installing a ceiling fan. Of course!
Fan's in. That was the easy part, once I got a load-bearing pancake box. Now on to the painting.
First, we peeled the wallpaper. At first, that was a family project -- even Isaac helped! But when the going got tough, I got abandoned. Actually, that was sort of intentional-- Saraah's got a paper to write, and I don't know what chemicals they are that turn wallpaper paste into water, but I'm pretty sure I don't want my not-yet-two-year-old playing with them. And Theo helped a little, but quickly got frustrated and went off to do his summer reading, with which I really can't argue.
Okay, so we got the wallpaper down, the walls washed, sanded, and washed again. All traces of wallpaper were gone, and in many areas, I was down to bare sheet rock. No wallpaper traces remained. This must be fully understood if anything wondrous is to come of the rest of this scree. 'Cause when we put the primer on, things got weird.
We had exposed sheetrock, so we got sheet rock primer. We started priming. And anywhere you hit the same spot twice, like, say, we're you overlapped your roller strokes to try to get an even coat, the stuff you'd just put down peeled right back up again. Worse, even where it didn't, it started to crack as it dried. By the time we'd done a wall and a half, it looked like we lived in a 100 year-old house with original paint. That's really cool when you live in a 150 year old house. Ours is less than 20. Not good.
So back I went to Lowe's, with my can of primer. "Oh," they said, "You didn't wash the walls." Sure did. "Oh," they said, "there's still paint on the walls." This wall has never seen paint in its life. "Oh," they said, "You didn't sand." More thoroughly than I remember sanding the bathroom, and this didn't happen there. "Oh," they said, and kind of scratched their heads. "Well, we can't refund when you used half the can." Well, sure, I used it, but it didn't stay on the walls. Still, I kept my cool and my sense of humor, and they happened to have the Valspar man in at that very moment, so he came over to see what was up. "Oh," he said, and went through the same list again. He finally decided that there was still some very persistent wallpaper glue residue and we should use "Over glossy" primer. Okay, we'll try that. I'm willing to concede that there may have been some residue, because the peeling thing only happened in some places, but the cracking happened everywhere, so I also think there was something wrong with that lot of primer.
Either way, we've (the three eldest members of the household) have just finished priming the entire room with the new primer, and it seems to be staying up fine now. Tonight, we paint!