This is a tale of painting a white wall red. If you’re offended by “bad language”, just skip it.
The TL;DR tag for this post is “Fuck the red wall.”
Seriously. I’m so done. But, so far from done.
At this very moment, I’m waiting on yet another border coat to dry so I can go back and actually finishing painting the wall red the many more coats it needs.
Last week I got some wild hair about wanting an accent wall in our “breakfast nook.” (That’s in quotes because the space easily fits our dining room table with both its leaves put in. Where I’m sitting now is technically our formal dining room, but it’s been converted into an office…bar…storage…) So, off to Lowe’s I go. I very thoroughly (less than 5 minutes) browse through the color selections and find a red that matches the color I want. Take the color card up to the guy, wait around, pick up my quart of color and head home. Come to find out later, a quart isn’t near enough to paint a white wall red. By this time, everyone is home, it’s getting late, and we still have to head to Target after Lowe’s. Back to Lowe’s we go. Walk up to the paint counter, hand the person the SAME paint card from earlier in the day and ask for a gallon. After waiting around for 15 minutes, the scary lady comes back and starts barking something about them being out of magenta and they can’t do the color but they can color match and ahhhhh!!!! I’ve got one kid pretending to play soccer in the aisle, one kid trying to climb the paint counter, and a lady yelling at me about magenta. After some not so coherent back and forth about magenta (SERIOUSLY?! What the hell does magenta have to do with anything?! Oh, right…that’s coming…), I get my gallon of nonrefundable color matched mixed paint and head on my way. Get done with our Target shopping, head back to the Red Wall of Death, open the newly acquired paint can and OH! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?! Oh, I see. It’s the god-damned magenta tinted paint!!
Sigh.
Whatever. It’s not the same color, but it’ll work. So, back to painting I go. And painting. With more painting. Jesus, why won’t these white blotches go away?! Oh, hey, here’s an actual paint brush and not a roller. I’ll just use that. In 2×2 sections. And paint the entire.freaking.wall.that way.
There’s red paint on the floor. There’s red paint on the ceiling. But, it takes until getting the red paint inside the window frame that I finally catch on to that whole taping thing. You know, the tape I bought when I got the paint supplies. Oh, but to properly tape, I should really take down the blinds. Oh sweet mother of God, what is that?! Oh, no big. It’s just our sheetrock crumbling!
The majority of the top of the window’s sheetrock was hanging down. Plus, the top half of the window seemed to be pulled away from the wall. Off to Walmart I go to get some mesh and plaster to do some not so fancy patch work. You know what plastering’s like? Frosting a cake. Guess what I’m not good at. Yeah. After sanding, scraping off old caulk, meshing, plastering, resanding, vacumming, and killz-ing the inside of the window, I was *finally* able to get back to painting the fucking red wall. Which meant properly taping EVERYTHING and then border painting. Again.
Once the actual red paint is done, I get to go back and caulk the window back to the wall. Then finding some proper white paint to paint the inside of that.
On the plus side, the white baseboard/inside window really makes the red pop. The downside is noticing how much every.thing.else needs to be painted. Six months from now, I’m pretty sure I’ll STILL be painting some part of my house, seeing as how every wall leads to another.
But for now, now I drink. And bitch. Then drink some more. I’m sure there will be plenty of bitching as well.
Here. Look at a picture of Colin with his first place trophy for soccer. I’m out.
I once had a similar wild hair. I needed, NEEDED, to paint our fireplace surround and mantle Remembrance Day Poppy Red. That was in 1983. It still hasn’t dried.
Commiserations. And Colin is so happy!
I’m sure your next birthday cake will be very nicely frosted, given your practice.
Love,
Momunitwashington
See and i liked the way the wall looked with one coat. I could see the splotchyness, but it kinda looked like those finishes that are so popular these days.
IT’S BROWN, DAMMIT!! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?!