I painted half the office at home then ran out of paint.
I painted white over white. You feel like going blind, try doing that, checking if you missed a spot or not.
I masked everything off, painted half the office, then ran out of paint.
White over white. Semi-gloss Polar White over cheap mix-it-yourself from powder white. The half of the office I got painted looks nice with the semi-gloss finish.
I painted from worst to best, starting around the skylight where brown stains traced down the wall from a thundershower or two that caught us with our windows open. Then I painted the corners, then the dirtiest bits, then the biggest wall.
Then part of the ceiling and parts of two more walls, then I ran out of paint.
I ran out of paint because we hadn’t painted that room since before we moved in. The paint on that wall, the matte-finish paint, had been drying for twelve years or so. It really sucked up this fresh paint.
Usually I buy too much paint. For once I try to calculate exactly how much I’ll need, to avoid waste, and this happens. There I stood, brush in one hand, roller in the other, hours of daylight left, staring at a clean, fresh white wall.
Once I painted the library — I call it the library, we call it the library, I dunno; it’s our posh room, the room with the books and the fancy tilework on the floor and the musical instruments and my single malts and all the other booze. Sometimes we call it the music room — I once painted that room two different colors in a single day, a total of three or four coats of paint.
Maybe you remember.
Remember how the first green just looked different there, in that north light filtered through birch leaves, than it had in the hardware store?
Simply the wrong shade, you said.
Hurry and get whatever other shade you want, I said, remember that? As long as I have everything masked off, let’s go for it.
Green over green over white.
When we moved in, every room was white. I painted every room white, and we said we’d live in them a little and decide what color we wanted to paint them.
Now the kitchen is off-white. Some ivory shade, perfect for that room.
The entry way has gone from white to yellow to sort of a salmon, and we have bolder plans for it, not to mention what I’m going to do to the furniture once I get my workshop cleared out. I want to paint the furniture — now worn natural wood — with oil paints. My dad did that to my bedroom furniture when I was a kid, what he called antiqueing. I thought it very cool at the time; when I see that dresser now on visits, I find it sad and chintzy. What I do to the entryway furniture will be totally different, my daughters won’t find it sad when they grow up.
The living room, we have bold plans for that too. Now yellow over yellow over yellow over yellow over white, so many different shades of yellow. We’re going to go orangish-reddish-brownish with that, or something. I’ve got a natural sponge all ready to go, I’m going to give that room a coat of something and then sponge another shade over it but it’s going to look good, it’s not going to look like someone bought an interior decoration how-to book.
I think we’ll leave the playroom as-is for a while; that’s green paint over green wallpaper we brought back from Japan with us and had a Bosnian refugee hang for us during the war. He was living with the friend of a friend and needed employment. He did a terrible job but we felt sorry for him and he told incredible stories. We gave up on turning that into a Japanese room for now, our tatami mats are mouldering in the attic and Gamma uses the room as her studio; every shade of paint is spattered on the walls, my fault, we get a little wild sometimes when we paint in there.
The stairwell is light yellow and I like it like that, nice and bright.
On the rainy days I paint, on the sunny days I fuck off or work in the flowerbeds if I must.
here’s some assvice: sponging is hard. ragging is easy. I’ve seen lots of bad sponging jobs, but a wad of damp cheesecloth patted over a thin coat of brushed-on paint to eradicate the brushmarks: that gives a nice soft ‘plaster’ effect, easy and fast and foolproof. satin finish over matte works well for that–it glows.
yeah i’m kinda torn over that whole effect thing and suppose i’ll test it on a wall behind a dresser first. part of the problem is we have plaster walls to begin with, making some effects redundant.
At the urging of my (then) girlfriend, I painted wide (14″) stripes in the dining room, subtle tone-on-tone… ochre yellow and an almost undetectably darker shade of ochre yellow. With a white ceiling, wood floors and Mahogany furniture it looks pretty sexy. Also, at the time it was fashionable to paint an ‘accent wall’, so I painted the adjacent living room mostly the same but solid lighter ochre yellow and the wall you see through to the dining room a… a… soft, dark-ish purple is the only way to describe the color. I looks much better than I imagined it would. Unfortunately, that was almost ten years ago and it’s time to do it again. I’ve enjoyed the different look very much though and always get compliments on it. So, the moral of this is don’t be afraid to get creative- it’s only paint!
Er- vertical stripes that is, not prison stripes.
I feel like I sort of eavesdropped on a therapy session there…in your house of colors.
Hmmm, white? Are you living in a rental unit? I’m sorry, I consider myself pretty tolerant, but white walls in a house that you own is beyond the limits. Isn’t there an Austrian version of “Trading Spaces” yet?
ha, I read ‘rental unit’ as ‘mental unit.’ And I thought, How awful, that they make the mental patients sit around staring at white walls.
Not that there’s anything wrong with white walls. They can feel fresh sometimes.
Friends moved into a house with a kitchen that had yellow and black diagonal stripes (4″ wide). Just don’t do that and you’ll probably be fine.
Only the office is white, because it’s such a small room. Until recently, everything else was off-white or otherwise careful. But now we explode in a whirl of bold colors and patterns. Like, orange! Or something.
When I sold my last house, I finally (after one month of snarky feedback comments from other realtors) broke down and painted my boys’ rooms white.
What’s wrong with orange, kelly green or brick red, I ask you? Sheesh. (Not in the same room, mind you- one was 1/2 orange and 1/2 white with a wallpaper border separating the two; one was kelly green, okay, all green, all over; one was brick red and white vertical stripes on the bottom and a white on top, divided with a chair rail.)
It seems as if not everyone likes color. Some people WANT white walls- either that, or they’re afraid or unwilling to paint a wall themselves.
Okay, this is obviously a sore spot with me. I’m going to go (and this is the truth, so I’d say there’s some irony here) and finish painting the woodwork in my dining room.
White.
I read “mental unit” and thought “Mig, living in a leettle grey cell .”
And now I must go to the produce market and press obscenities into bananas. Jilbur is such a bad influence.