Tuesday, August 14, 2012

this was supposed to be easier

Jason and I are reading the Game of Thrones series right now (when we're not up to our elbows in paint), and the Stark family motto is "Winter is Coming." If we had a motto, right now it would be "This was supposed to be easier." Or something more poetic, but along the same lines.

By now you'd think that we would expect things will go wrong, but for some reason, we keep getting thrown off when our plans go awry. Like when I realized I broke the plastic tube that connects the fridge's water supply after moving the fridge to paint the wall behind it. Or when we tried reinstalling the blinds. Or when we tried to move the couch and scratched up our nicely painted wall. Or just trying to get painters tape to stick to the wall.

Last week we brought in a contractor to remove our asbestos-free popcorn. The team spent Monday and Tuesday removing the popcorn and Wednesday was spent texturizing and priming. Thursday was supposed to be the last day and the crew spent it painting the ceiling a nice crisp white. However, toward the end of the day on Thursday, we noticed some strange stripes in the ceiling.

The contractor had never seen this before, but it appeared that the mudding compound used on the drywall was showing through the paint (or the paint was brighter on the compound than it was on the drywall). And this was after one coat of primer and two coats of paint.

(Editor's note: We really should have seen this one coming, after we had our light box in the kitchen removed and replaced with recessed lighting we learned that drywall needs more than just one coat of primer and it took us four coats of paint to get the ceiling in the kitchen to look good. Oh well.)

After the contractor called some associates and visted Sherwin Williams' paint experts and Jason did some exhaustive internet research we came to the conclusion that this was likely due to our choice in paint finishes.

We picked satin to go throughout the condo for two main reasons:
  • It's easy to clean but not too shiny
  • We wanted consistency throughout the condo. Some of our walls cross into other rooms - i.e. the kitchen and living room share a wall and it would look weird to have two different finishes on one wall. This way we can have a food fight wherever without worrying about spaghetti sauce staining the wall. 
While satin is great to clean, it shows imperfections more than other flatter finishes. The paint crew came back on Monday and finished up the job with one final coat of flat paint and it looks amazing.

Removing the popcorn was a great investment, right up there with the hardwood floors that are coming in less than a week!

Here's a before an after shot:


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