Painting the Hallway, Living Room & Kitchen

Alright everyone, I’ve got a painting update for you.

Since we’ve last talked, I’ve finished up the Florida room, the dining room, the kitchen and just today, the hallway. So far, I used a gallon of Valspar “Quail Egg” in the Florida room, two gallons of (they’re all Valspar) “Woodrow Wilson Putty” in the dining room, kitchen and living room and a half gallon of Quail Egg in the hallway. I’d also say I used about a quarter gallon of pure white for all the trim.

It’s been a lot of painting. I’m not going to sit here and say that I’ve been painting the whole time. If I were to start this project and not stop until it was done, I could probably get the entire interior finished in a day and a half. But at the snail’s pace I work, it’ll take two weeks. The outside – well, that’s another story. That’ll probably take only a week because I’m actually looking forward to it. I’m not enjoying the interior much. All the taping and trying to be careful uses an exorbitant amount of time. When I’m outside, I think I’ll have a bit more liberty to paint the way I’d like.

The inside of the house is looking a lot better though. I think I already told you about how the previous occupants hung way too many pictures and then smeared spackle over the holes to fill them, only to paint bright white over the spackle. Mind you, the rest of the walls were off-white, so those bright white spots never looked too good. One of the benefits of painting in here is the “cleaner” look. The colors we chose are working very well with the ultra bright white I’m painting the trim. More modern, if you will.

I know I spoke very highly of the PaintStick EZ-Twist Paint Roller in my previous post, but I did want to give you an update on it. An update along with a word of warning.

While this roller is simply the best thing since sliced bread, I’m going to tell you that it’s extremely important that you clean it very thoroughly after using it. The roller taught me this little lesson after my first and second use.

My very first use went great. The roller was brand new and the walls practically painted themselves. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. When I was finished doing what I had to do (I think it was the dining room), I cleaned the entire system out with water. And to this day, I think I did a good job. The thing is, in the actual “fuzzy” roller part, there are little holes that allow the paint to be pushed through – from the tube, into the fuzz and onto the wall. If that roller and those holes aren’t spick-and-span, they’ll clog. After my first cleaning, I must have only gotten 80% of the paint out of the fuzz. The remaining 20% dried, causing some clogging during my second use. The way I found this out was by watching the small drops of paint appear at the edges of the roller and splatter on the floor. That’s not supposed to happen.

I really didn’t think too much about my lack of cleaning skills until my third use, when not only did the paint leak out of the edges like I just mentioned, but also squirted out of the only available holes that weren’t clogged. The number of those holes totaled around two. My frustration level grew to the point of me telling Laura something like, “I’m going to throw this @#$%^& thing through the #$% &*^% window! I had to take the roller apart, toss the fuzzy thing into the garbage and paint two large walls in the living room with a brush. Talk about getting annoyed.

When we were at Lowe’s yesterday, picking up the remaining paint we need for the project, I grabbed a new fuzzy roller. This time, I’m going to be very careful about cleaning it and will let it soak for a good long time in water. I don’t want to buy another one for a while because they cost more than $5 each. Not a lot of money, but too much for something that was brand new, and that shouldn’t have ended up in the garbage due to nothing more than my own neglect.

Anyway, I took a few pictures of the hallway and the only part of the living room that didn’t have junk all over the place. I’d also like to give my boy, Pete, a big thank you for letting my use his ladder. While I’m tall, I’m not that tall, so thank you.

Enjoy the last picture. I couldn’t help myself.