zabbo

Alice and I have talked about painting since before we moved into this house. It’s only been a few months, sure, but it’s been a long two months. Alice finally had enough and we set out to try our first room. We started with the dinky entry way that is just inside the front door. It’s dinky. I would guess it’s about six foot by six foot by.. how tall are our ceilings? 10 feet?

Alice wins all kinds of points for finding the Miller paint store just down the street from us at Pine and Grand. We stumbled somewhat blindly into a super helpful employee guy (ask for Sean) who helped us find the right kit for our first job. It was very nice to find someone who was clearly enthusiastic about what he was talking about. He was particularly excited about these brushes made right here in Portland by Purdy. We got some of those and some rollers and some sanding stuff and this crazy tack cloth stuff and some spackle and a cute edger and an extendo-pole and some tape and a cheapo plastic tarp and a scraper and paint and primer. I was surprised by how heavy three gallons feels after seven blocks.

You can see what the room looked like when we moved in. That picture was actually taken to show off the cute Ikea bits we got to keep our coats and shoes in line. You can also see the dark purple wall and horrible off-green. The main goal was to get rid of that green. It’s Alice’s kryptonite. We went with a simple off-white for the trim and intended to brighten the room up with some yellow.

All told we ended up with two coats of primer and two coats of color. We taped off the floor and the glass and the light fixture. We also took the opportunity to crack open the window above the front door that the previous super-stars had nailed shut and then painted over. That, and learning to work with the primer, made the first coat the longest by far. It was a solid 4 hours for two people. Well, maybe not solid. We probably spent more time singing along to Madonna than a professional might. We got pictures after the first coat of primer. You can see pretty clearly how hard it was to beat the purple into submission. The second coat went on very quickly. I might have been going too fast with the roller, though. I managed to frost myself.

Luckily, the trim only needed one coat of white on top of the primer. That all went pretty smoothly. The purple, though, refused to die. We weren’t as thorough with the primer in the corners as we should have been. After the first coat it was still pretty obvious that there was something dark and evil lurking under the yellow. We really laid it on thick with the second coat, which went on very quickly, and that seemed to do the trick. Enough so, anyway, that we aren’t interested in the dimishing returns that a third coat would bring.

So, one down and, depending how you count, at least five much larger rooms to go. It’s going to be a very long summer. But if the other rooms turn out like this one did, it’ll be worth it.