attention to detail
Blerg. I've been spending the past several Sundays painting my living and dining rooms. I've been trying to do it properly, with taping off edges and cutting in and doing multiple coats and touching up areas. It hasn't been so bad. Not perfect, but a good enough job.
Most recently, though, I've been painting the entry area a deep red (Behr "Chianti"). While the rest of the walls are done in eggshell finish, I thought it would be nice to make this area a satin instead. It is a very pretty, rich color. While I could get away with using the kind of paint that supposedly comes with primer for the other walls, I was advised by the paint people at Home Depot that reds are notoriously terrible to work with, and that coverage is difficult, so I'd be better off to do a tinted primer first, lest I have to do many, many more coats of just the paint. So I started with a healthy coat of the tinted primer, which looked like a dull pepto bismol color. I followed that with a second, lighter coat of the tinted primer, just to be sure. Last weekend, I did the actual Chianti color paint. After a cat-related paint mishap, I got started. It went on okay, but I definitely needed a second coat. I put that on several hours later. Today, I did a few more touch ups and went to peel off the painters tape I had carefully applied to protect the trim and ceilings.
Sigh. I hate painters tape and trim. I remembered from an episode of Trading Spaces back in the day that sometimes the painters tape just does not lift off with clean edges. If I peeled it off when it was still wet, that would have worked, but since I had essentially 4 coats, with each coat having to dry thoroughly before I could put on the next, obviously that would not work. The next thing to do is to try to go around all of it with a razor blade. First, that is totally tedious, so in some areas I definitely wasn't patient enough and tried to pull at a sharp angle where I thought it would work. It sometimes did. But I did go at some areas with a razor blade. It didn't really work. Because I have 4 coats of primer and paint over it, I couldn't find the edges clearly I'd end up slicing through the tape and have blue tape stuck into the paint after I'd pulled off the rest of it. So I've been going in with tiny tweezers to try to pull the blue bits out. But even when I did all of that, areas of paint just peeled away with the tape. In some areas it is just not a clean edge but I could live with it. In others, big chunks peeled away. And even more frustrating is that the painters tape still didn't protect some areas. The paint or the primer seeped in, even though I tried to seal it pretty tight against the trim and ceilings. They are irregular surfaces, so it was bound to happen a little, but it ended up worse than I expected. There are gross dull pink areas and bright red Chianti areas on some places, and while it isn't the end of the world, I'm frustrated. I've been at this for weeks and tried to do it right and I'm just really sick of climbing up and down the step ladder with tweezers to try to peel away blue tape that is visible but impossible to grab.
Later this week, I'll have go back up on the step stool with the razor scraper and razor blade to clean up the edges. I'll buy a dainty detail brush and go back up with the red paint and hopefully a steady hand. I'll go back up again with a second detail brush and the white ceiling flat paint and the glossy white trim paint and hopefully be able to camouflage the primer and paint that had seeped past the tape.
Finally, I should be able to put up my shelves, and hang a few things on the walls, and maybe I'll finally take some "after pictures".
ETA: I think when I go to do the fixing with the detail brushes, I'll use a thin piece of cardboard to guard the other areas, rather than tape.
Most recently, though, I've been painting the entry area a deep red (Behr "Chianti"). While the rest of the walls are done in eggshell finish, I thought it would be nice to make this area a satin instead. It is a very pretty, rich color. While I could get away with using the kind of paint that supposedly comes with primer for the other walls, I was advised by the paint people at Home Depot that reds are notoriously terrible to work with, and that coverage is difficult, so I'd be better off to do a tinted primer first, lest I have to do many, many more coats of just the paint. So I started with a healthy coat of the tinted primer, which looked like a dull pepto bismol color. I followed that with a second, lighter coat of the tinted primer, just to be sure. Last weekend, I did the actual Chianti color paint. After a cat-related paint mishap, I got started. It went on okay, but I definitely needed a second coat. I put that on several hours later. Today, I did a few more touch ups and went to peel off the painters tape I had carefully applied to protect the trim and ceilings.
Sigh. I hate painters tape and trim. I remembered from an episode of Trading Spaces back in the day that sometimes the painters tape just does not lift off with clean edges. If I peeled it off when it was still wet, that would have worked, but since I had essentially 4 coats, with each coat having to dry thoroughly before I could put on the next, obviously that would not work. The next thing to do is to try to go around all of it with a razor blade. First, that is totally tedious, so in some areas I definitely wasn't patient enough and tried to pull at a sharp angle where I thought it would work. It sometimes did. But I did go at some areas with a razor blade. It didn't really work. Because I have 4 coats of primer and paint over it, I couldn't find the edges clearly I'd end up slicing through the tape and have blue tape stuck into the paint after I'd pulled off the rest of it. So I've been going in with tiny tweezers to try to pull the blue bits out. But even when I did all of that, areas of paint just peeled away with the tape. In some areas it is just not a clean edge but I could live with it. In others, big chunks peeled away. And even more frustrating is that the painters tape still didn't protect some areas. The paint or the primer seeped in, even though I tried to seal it pretty tight against the trim and ceilings. They are irregular surfaces, so it was bound to happen a little, but it ended up worse than I expected. There are gross dull pink areas and bright red Chianti areas on some places, and while it isn't the end of the world, I'm frustrated. I've been at this for weeks and tried to do it right and I'm just really sick of climbing up and down the step ladder with tweezers to try to peel away blue tape that is visible but impossible to grab.
Later this week, I'll have go back up on the step stool with the razor scraper and razor blade to clean up the edges. I'll buy a dainty detail brush and go back up with the red paint and hopefully a steady hand. I'll go back up again with a second detail brush and the white ceiling flat paint and the glossy white trim paint and hopefully be able to camouflage the primer and paint that had seeped past the tape.
Finally, I should be able to put up my shelves, and hang a few things on the walls, and maybe I'll finally take some "after pictures".
ETA: I think when I go to do the fixing with the detail brushes, I'll use a thin piece of cardboard to guard the other areas, rather than tape.