Project 1- Day 7

Some things I learned these past few days that I feel I should share with you:

1. Interior primer, when it's oil based and not water, is a different consistency than exterior primer. When you open the can, it's a murky brown mess that needs a good mixing in order to bring it back to it's ready to roll state. This is normal, and no cause for yelling and cursing.

2. Oil based primer, unlike it's water based cousin (which is the only primer I've had any experience with) is a thinner, more watery type of paint and must be treated appropriately. There will be drips. It will be frustrating. You you will want to pitch the whole thing out the window. .Denatured alcohol will take off the drips. It will also remove the finish from the wood floor. This may be a problem to some people, but we are thinking of having the floor sanded and refinished anyhow. Not a problem. Yet.


4. Oil based primer that is meant to cover fire damage (where was this stuff when I painted after our apartment fire? Man it would've rocked) is shellac infused into some type of alcohol. It stinks. It stinks bad. It burns your eyes and throat. The worst part is when you are in the closet painting and the fumes have no where to go. We had fire damage on the door in this photo, but that's not why we got this particular primer. That door has been sealed up for a bunch of years now, and I never really had a good look at it. I wish I had taken a before photo to show you how awful the door was. I am totally amazed and impressed. That door was dubbed "the secret passage way" by my kids when we bought our house. It leads through that area you can barley make out (it's used to store seasonal decorations and other random things that I don't want to go all the way to the attic for) and then down stairs into the room off our our kitchen. Handy, but also very cold and drafty in the winter. We had put up blue board and plastic to keep dd warm.

5. When you have a plan, stick with it even when your friends tell you that your plan is silly and you can have an alternate plan. I finished the first coat of primer last night. My friend across the street told me I only needed one coat. Normally that would be correct. When you are trying to cover up old wallpaper glue infused into bare drywall, and eleventy billion spots of drywall mud.. not so much. So today I was in there, putting a second coat in the yellow closet and on the red door, and the part of me that was sooooo tired of working on this room said, I think one coat is fine. So I mentioned this to The Boy and he thought maybe I was right. But the more I worked, the more I argued internally with myself.. and decided to just do the two coats. I am sooooo glad I did. It covered so nicely.. the walls came out so much better than we could have hoped for, and no masking paper. I won't have a chance to paint them until it warms up some and the dampness goes away (that and I have time).. so maybe mother's day weekend.

All and all, I am quite impressed with how much we got done this week.