painted lady

The bedroom is now wearing its second coat of paint. It's a beautiful, sunny, dry weekend here, perfect for painting. I have the bedroom window cranked open to let the paint fumes out. (Yes, you chilly East Coasters, I am rubbing it in just a little bit.)

Though friends A* and S* both offered to help paint when I saw them last weekend. they both bowed out on my invitation to tackle it this weekend. S* had scheduled herself to be out of town this weekend, and A* has had a stressful week and needed some down time. No harm, no foul on either count.

But as y'all know, I am not generally the Queen of Patience. When I get in the mood to do a project like this, I don't want to wait. And I often overdo it.

So first, I consider it a personal best that I tackled only one room by myself this weekend. And not even a whole room. 3/4 of a room. The fourth wall of my bedroom is all built-in storage, which is painted off-white to match all the woodwork in the place. No way was I going to paint that.

I did a lot of the preparation work on Friday night. Took down the pictures and hangers from the walls, spackled and sanded where repairs were needed. Moved small furniture pieces out of the room and pushed the big ones (bed, two low bookshelves, chest of drawers) towards the middle. Put up all the blue tape around the edges of the paintable walls. I still slept in there Friday night.

Saturday I had a morning obligation, but the afternoon was free for painting. Down went the dropcloths, and up went the first coat of paint. It was predictably splotchy, but still, just getting some color up on the walls made a tremendous difference to how I felt in there.

It was pretty, but still stinky. I fled the worst of the fumes by decamping to my favorite neighborhood coffee spot, where I found an art troupe preparing for a workshop or something they were going to do in there. They busied themselves taking down the lights strung all over the ceiling, moving furniture from one room to another... it felt just like what I had done to get ready to paint!

My impatience has in the past led me to skimp on the amount of time I've let paint dry and cure. I tried not to make that mistake this time. The first coat dried all evening and overnight, plus through the morning. I slept in the living room, on my air bed. Very comfy.

Second coat went up this afternoon. I expected the muscles in my arms and shoulders to pay the price, but in fact, my legs are the most sore -- probably from climbing up and down the stepladder, on top of the walking I did yesterday, a couple of miles on concrete.

Happily, there doesn't need to be a third coat. I'm going to let it dry overnight again, and since the office is closed tomorrow for MLK Day, I'll put the room back together then.

I'll also Freecycle the leftover paint. I'll wait to post it until I've painted the living room and hallway -- they're getting a different color than the bedroom did -- then I can offer all the leftover paint as a lot. It's not much, but still, I'd rather see it get used than thrown away. The bedroom color is called Roslyn's Blue, and the living room will be a light green called Zen Mist, both by Glidden, for those of you playing along at home.

I do have to look into how to dispose of the empty paint cans and other latex-paint-besmirched debris that will result from this full project.