And no, I don't mean those who do so artistically. This message is for those who either saw it done on HGTV and thought "I could do that", or those who are "simply" painting a room for a change in appearance. Do not, under any circumstances paint before you've had a cup of coffee, or red bull, or whatever it is you drink/eat to start your day.
Following 9 hours of sleep I thought I was in good enough shape to tackle the first item on my to-do list before I had my cup of joe. It was simple, all I had to do was slap a coat of paint on the three sided sink base in the guest bath. The grey that had been painted on the day before just didn't look right so a reapplication of "cotton whisper" was in order. With a bit too much haste I slapped on what I thought would be the first and only coat. Things were not going very well, which should have been my indicator, but instead I forged forward and like a fool just kept thicking he coat. Mistake two, I walked away.
My scolding coffee was continuing to cool to a drinkable temperature, so I decided it was a good time to check on my work. To my chagrin I returned to a paint job that was damn near oozing off. I had applied the paint so thick that it was forming ridges within the layer where the still wet paint was starting to run over the base layer that was starting to adhere to the gray. Its a bit hard to explain, and by no means was I going to take a picture of this colossal failure, but it looked horrible. Still not in the right frame of mind I thought it would be a good idea to ever so lightly run the brush across the job and "smooth it out a little". Again, I knew better and knew I should have stopped right then and there, but no, this quick task wasn't going to get the better of me, I could fix this, you'd see.
Whats that you say, bad idea number three? After my crap attempt at fixing the issue the paint looked even worse. No worries, I thought, the required second coat will undoubtidly cover up my egregious errors.
At this point the cup of cooling coffee was mocking my denial of its addiction. After a few sips I returned to the scene of the crime and like an ass applied the second coat. Mind you the first is still not fully dry and already looks like I applied it with my left hand with only one eye opened. Talk about bad to worse. Not only was my paint not applying well, but it was pulling up the old paint and excentuating the platus and valleys I was foolishly thinking I could hide.
I may have been foolish, but I'm no fool. It was time to throw in the towel and start anew. Thanks to the clever person who invented the paint scraper I was able to scrape off all three layers with ease which returned me to the proper starting point of the primer layer. Despite the fact that my 8 minute task had become an hour long process it was oddly refreshing to remove my errors and be able to start fresh.
After taking the time to gather the right tools for going about the painting process in an acceptable manor, I ran out of paint after only the first coat. Such is life. If you're a "do it yourselfer" please learn from my experience and, for the sake of your sanity, feed the monkey on your back before you start a project.
No comments:
Post a Comment