Painting the Guest Room

With winter here, my time to work on the house is throttling down. I shovel and clean the litter box far more (see blog) since my cats are only inside in the winter. My mom has had some surgeries and I’ve spent some nights with her.

Because there is so much clutter in this room that is either waiting to be picked up, or will be repurposed in the room when done, I must work on this one wall at a time. I don’t like that. But the wall against the steps will be where the bed goes, and a dark gray. The rest of the walls will be a lighter gray with the darker trim. So I am painting the highlighted wall first, pushing everything I can against it, and finishing. This week is the prep work and dark wall.

Before I ever started, I had to remove all the pictures placed helter-skelter on the walls with random nailholes and many pen marks x-ing the spot. There were two sets of curtain brackets even tho that room has seen only blinds for at least a decade. I patched the holes and lightly sanded. Then I deglossed all the trim and taped off my dark grey on that wall.

The salesman talked me up to a greater-coverage paint for that color, and I am so glad he did. As it was, it took 2 brush coats and one roller coat to make sure all the dimples were hidden. With something so dark, any missed spots would be unforgiving.

Proof positive our paint brushes and rollers are the best – halfway through the wall, my roller handle snapped off the extension pole. I’ve been using that roller handle with our roller since the dawn of time, and the roller is still going strong. Because I didn’t want to stop the job to run into town to buy a new handle, I finished the wall with our 4” paintbrush. I cleaned the floor best I could with my tea and oil concoction, and decided that junction looked good enough to push the furniture against.

My weekend with Andy was absolutely wonderful. We went out for about an hour for a drink to toast the memory of an old friend of his on Friday night. Saturday we attended Grace’s honors band concert and then to dinner with his parents. And Sunday we washed our cars together and broke up the ice in the driveway. I was so excited – I wore my wellies for the first time. I wish I had pics to show you, but take my word for it – they were adorable!