The Plan ®

My ed-u-mication in spray painting continues....

I loved the way the early attempts at trims turned out, learned a lot doing doors and bifolds

Time to step it up a notch and try something outside my comfort zone.... we're spraying furniture this week

The big concern all along has been, that using an HVLP system with latex paint the paint has to be thinned out to the point where drips are a definite problem and my mortal enemy (see my adventures with the bifolds!), and the coats must be very thin - anything too wet and the paint will separate before it dries. However the colour separation can be useful in giving you a nice natural looking subtle shadings in the colour which in an antique look can be quite good - if it's not too much.

Armed with that, a plan and with 2 backup plans in hand I took on the challenge.


The medicine chest was coming along - but dripping was still problematic.
A lack of adequate space to lay our everything flat was going to mean tackling the medicine chest and the vanity separately. Still I was laying down 2-3 coats a day, by the beginning of Wednesday morning I was starting to fear that I was just painting for the sake of resanding it and painting it again and wasn't really getting anywhere. However, I gave it another day (and 3 coats) and a new plan and flat space to lay the doors and shelves out on, and the cabinet flat on it's back.


And lo - there was much improvement.
Thursday we turned everything over and sprayed the other side. Between each coat was the frustration of little marks and mars and glitches I wasn't really happy with and more sanding. However, I was seeing enough improvement, and with the change in methodology was improving things - so I stuck it out.


I'm not 100% happy with the results, but I'd call it a decent amateur job. I wouldn't call it a professional finish. On the other hand I've paid professionals to do a job (flooring actually) for a professional finish in the past and not gotten what I consider a professional finish. I'm an awfully picky b**ch, thankfully so is my hubby. There's still a couple little brush touch ups to do later, but it's done - and I can live with it.



Before and After

Now I'm working the vanity today - and that's being even trickier, and I'm still not convinced it'll work. Despite the sanding, it isn't adhering as well as I'd like. With the dark wood colour I probably should have primed it first. (The medicine chest was raw wood, and thus had to primed before hand). I'm also really beginning to wonder whether an HVLP system is the best type for this sort of work, that perhaps an airless spray system wouldn't require as much paint thinning, and thus give a better result. I'll maybe pick up the cheap $35 one see the difference in the technigue and results before I outlay $700 on a professional system, but at this juncture I figure I'm definitely looking at a professional rig - not just for furniture and trims but for WHOLE WALLS! once we move and start doing a whole house of painting again (not to mention the cottages).

As we were planning the bathroom the big design problem was the vanity - originally when we were going to use the travertine throughout the bath a dark wood vanity made sense, but then we scaled the travertine back to just the shower area, and decided to paint the bathroom the lovely dark green of the bedroom alcove.





Ok now what we need is a beautiful antique white vanity. Now these are more limited. I saw one at Lowes in Hamilton - but that wasn't going to help much and it still would have busted the $500 budget for vanity and counter that we had. As would have ordering one from Vintage Tub and Bath (although I do still highly recommend them for well priced vintage look pieces). After much futzing and searching and debating costs. I found a gorgeous perfect vanity at Home Depot (hey even Sarah Richardson just used this same vanity last week on Sarah 101). It's solid wood (poplar with walnut veneers), has really nice organized storage inside, and is just a lovely piece - only problem - it's still dark wood.


However, by this point I had been gaining a bit of confidence with my spray painting techniques and decided "what the hell, it's perfect, it's inexpensive, it's gorgeous, I'll just spray it". I'd seen some of the gorgeous results of others having cabinetry and furniture resprayed - it made sense. Ok Ok - it also scares the dickens out of me - I've not done something thing complicated before. However, Home Depot was having one of their 20% Off Bathroom Events - with that price and that deal - I could throw in a bisque cultured marble countertop and still be under my $500. Sure I was still gonna have to buy a mirror and a medicine chest, but it was still not a big stretch beyond our original budget plan.

This had the added advantage of being able to buy the mirror, medicine chest etc that I liked and were cheaper options than buying the matching pieces to THAT set. So I was able to pick up a lovely unfinished cabinet at Kent for $60. I've done these pieces before and really had some fine results with them. Although to use this on a wall we had to turn it upside down and rebuild the drawer.

I was also able to pick up a nice framed mirror from Walmart for $30 instead of $200. I got a nice tall narrow butler's pantry cabinet (12"x14"x60") as well - did I mention there's a storage issue with this bathroom? I'm not sure we'll be able to use that one - it may not fit comfortably and I'm still debating more storage options so we'll leave that to last.

Now at one point I did chicken out and called a local fellow who does professional respraying of cabinetry - for the 3 bathroom pieces - $600 (taxes in). That kiboshed that idea. However, very worst case scenario - he'll spray the vanity for $250. I have a back up plan if I manage to completely ruin this beautiful piece of furniture. And if that doesn't work - well I guess I could paint the bathroom the same gold as the bedroom and buy the vanity again during the next Home Depot sale for $450. Ok - I have 2 back up plans.

Still I'd rather get this right the first time. First coat went on this morning. It's going to take a minimum of 4 or 5 sprays to get a nice even sweet finish - so I'm holding my breath for the next couple days (hopefully I can get two coats a day on - morning and evening).

I'm using the semi gloss hard wearing 'Trim, Door, High traffic' paint that has done such a lovely finish on the baseboards, door trims, and windows.

The colour is the same lovely 'Ivory Palace' that all the trims in the house were painted originally, and we've stuck with a) for simplicity and b) because it really does look fabulous back dropped against the chestnut hardwood and the wall colours of the master bedroom. It won't have the same 'aged' look of some of the other off white victorian style vanities, but it's also not going to be $4500.


The bathroom itself is going to have to wait for the painting to be finished. Because of the size and weight of the cabinet there wasn't much hope of painting it in my basement spray booth - so it's being painted 'in situ'. I'd hoped that I could work on 'non dusty' tasks around it while in between coats - but there isn't enough room to swing a dead cat in that bathroom so it's just going to have to wait a day or two.

One of the really wonderous parts of this journey we've been on is the fact it really does constantly evolve. We start out with one plan, and it grows and changes and tweaks and before you know it it doesn't really look like what we started out with in the first place at all.

And yet, it is.

In order for the 'new plan' to fit into 'The Plan®' it must contain certain critical elements, answer deep needs for both James and myself. As you're building the life you've always dreamed of it must contain the critical elements of the dream. That's the thing of it, we've always known the dream - we've not always been sure what the dream LOOKS like when it's all built. So we've added pieces, and taken away pieces and tinkered and tailored it.

Recently 'The Plan®' took another left turn.

I think we're going to leave Newfoundland. It even feels a bit odd saying it. I worked and planned and wanted for years to end up here. Largely at the time it was because Newfoundland was somewhere I could work, that would take me back to my own roots on ocean and specifically the North Atlantic, and James needed to be close to water as well. Newfoundland made sense. And the house we bought in Seal Cove made a lot of sense at the time as well - we needed the privacy, the quiet, the serenity that living deep in the forest gave us, and kept me close enough to work. Then I quit working, relations with the neighbours reminded us that we weren't as enclaved as all that, the kids began to move on, in other words - life changed.

We still want the things we were looking for in this property - just more of it. Room for animals (dogs, cats, horses, alpacas, pigs, lambs, - NO CHICKENS!), the quiet and privacy that the forest and large plots of land provide, we still need the ocean, I need water - ocean, stream, pond, something - for me and for the dogs, I need room the dogs can run without harassing the neighbours.

However, there was still the question of what would our lives look like? What would we do with ourselves day in day out, and how would we afford it?

One of the things that became clear after a while, was that what we came to Newfoundland looking for didn't exist here for us. The dream job turned out not to be such a dream, and our visions of private acres of field and forest by the ocean couldn't be ours. Yes! Those sorts of properties, the ones you see in the tourism ads, the quaint life everyone wants to come and see - that IS here. However, anyone who owns an old farmstead or saltbox with more than a few acres by the sea, they're not selling it. They're holding on to those properties for 'when the kids come home', and the kids will come home.

So one day I'm perusing the real estate listings on the internet, as I am oft likely to do and I come across a commercial listing in Sydney Cape Breton for a 23 acre motor speedway 1/4 mile track, all concessions, stands and out buildings. Now I know this is a joke, we can't really afford it, and all of that, but ONE of the great loves James and I have always had is race cars. Could be fun. So we spend a day looking at it joking about it, considering it, turning it over and seeing if it could work. Including property prices in the area for where we might live. Well owning a racetrack isn't really the sort of retirement business we'd enjoy doing all day every day, so the Island Speedway idea fell to the wayside. However, the property search led us to finding that there was a good possibility we could afford a large piece of property (25+ acres) with a livable smaller home, and the possibility of outbuildings (sheds and barns) and still leave us a sizeable chunk of cash to live on while James builds up the laser business.

We started looking further afield. Cape Breton, Guysborough County, Antigonish. As I was looking I came across this:

It's being sold off in 4 or 5 chunks of various prices - but the whole thing together is about a $1,000,000. We can't afford a million dollars. But I knew - just knew then and there on the spot that THIS was the life we've been looking for.

We don't want a B&B, we're too intensely private to have people in our home, but we love having company. We want self sufficiency and sustainability a la River Cottage, but we're no hair shirt people - we like our creature comforts and our technology. We want hospitality and tourism, but without the tourists.

So here's the dream - the latest evolution of 'The Plan®'. A Writer's and Artist's retreat. All along we've both needed our artistic outlets - that's why James bought the LASER, he needs to be creating, he wants to teach and lead again, I want to play, with colour, with fabric, with metal and wood and paint and clay and.... but I have zero talent for any of those things, and I want space, physically and mentally, to write and cook and sew, and I want to organize it all. And we want to share these things, with all of those people we've always connected with so well on the internet - the artists and writers and cartoonists, and creative people. We won't make a fortune. We don't really want to. We'll start with one of two small cottages, hopefully make enough to justify building more and bigger art studios, add another cabin or two, maybe host some weekend workshops, invite established artists to lead a workshop or two, maybe even eventually build a small professional music studio.

So yeah we're gonna need that forested acreage by the sea after all. We can't find it in Newfoundland, but maybe we can find it in Nova Scotia. I don't have a $1,000,000 to buy it already built. But maybe, just maybe, we can find something, somewhere in Nova Scotia - Fox Harbour Advocate Harbour, Digby, Annapolis Royal, Kentville, Parrsbaro, Cape Negro. I think maybe we can. Maybe even this one. It might take us a while yet to get there, and there might be a detour or two along the way - depending on how things turn out, but then 'The Plan®' is an evolving thing, but I think we're on the right track.

The wonderful thing about paint is - if you screw it up, fixing it isn't that big a headache. But, I'm already behind and don't really want to get into a week of painting the master bedroom.

And of course, I'm all about using what one has, and is available or inexpensive and working it - rather than get locked into an idea or plan that can prove expensive. The problem with this is - the more creative you get with what you already have available - the more difficult it becomes and the greater the chance of messing it up.

Welcome to the master bedroom. Way back when we moved in - I hated, the boring builder beige. A colour so nondescript that ICI has discontinued it. Nevada Sun 20YY 61/231. My original plan had been to do a faux finish in greens (my private forest schema) - Country Cottage light undercoat, Tall Evergreen dark overcoat and accents of Louisiana Hot Sauce and Golden Retriever.

As things go, when we decided we were gonna sell up, that scheme seemed a bit too dramatic, and it went to the wayside. However, the beige was still boring so we decided on a accent in the window alcove - we tried the Country Cottage - too bright (but perfect for the kitchen) and ended up with the Tall Evergreen. (That was when we decided to do the master bath in Tall Evergreen with the ivory marble shower).

All this seemed to work with our bed linens (which had always meant to be a complimenting part of my forest greens theme) which are sorta-mostly paprika-ish red and dark wine and gold duvet cover.

So far so good.

So Walmart has a linen sale on with the perfect King sized comforter sets for $59, very nice, and as our usual linens are inundated with dog fur - an extra set for showings would be a good idea. Except we couldn't get the red; but there's a very nice dark green/blue/gray tones with brown/gold accents set which will still work with the greens and the wrought iron look of the room. I think.

This morning cleaning the walls in prep for doing the hardwood flooring (chestnut bamboo) I decide that parts of the walls are in rough enough shape I should just spruce em up with a quick coat of the last 2 litres of Nevada Sun. But if I'm gonna go to the trouble of painting the walls I might as well brighten it up with a nice finish and some .. depth. In comes the plan for a slightly deeper tone of the same colour, and a dry brush technique to give it a bit of a linen look. Sounds great.

Except - Nevada Sun isn't on ICI's books any more - so we get a VERY close next colour Farmer's Almanac. (20YY 61/231 vs 20YY 63/258) and work from there into a deeper accent of either Moonstruck or Cairo Gold. Still with me?

So ... we got Nevada Sun on the walls now, Cairo Gold dry brushed over it, accent alcove and master bath in Tall Evergreen, Chestnut bamboo flooring, current linens in paprika red with wine and gold duvet cover, and back up dressing linens in green/blue/gray w/brown/gold accents.

Does it work? Frankly I haven't got a clue now. I suspect I may have to keep the back up linens packaged away, and maybe look for a different comforter/duvet cover. But hey, it's only till the house is sold... the next bedroom I start all over again with a fresh scheme!

Even before my dear daughter leaves us on Labour Day weekend to head off on her own adventure known as "college" I kinda figured we'd start with some smaller projects.

Like painting the man child's room.

The whole thing with painting is: a) it's a super cheap way to make a BIG difference in the look of your home b) if you screw it up - fixing it is also cheap and easy. Honestly, paint is just THE biggest bang for your buck.

So, the Man child is off in St Louis for the summer and not due back until late September. Time to paint. He picked his own colours when we moved in and painted all the rooms. Honestly, it wasn't a BAD blue, just a little dark. Time to neutralize all that dark a bit.

We're still waiting on some funds to come in so - an old trick of mine. Go through the cans of left over paint from other projects and see if we have something already in stock that'll work. In this case - 'Soft Wheat'. We're not sure what the previous owners used it for as I can't see it used anywhere else in the house. Ok, problem, we only have ONE can, and it's a very dark colour we're painting over. General rules say, 'buy a can of primer to cover a dark colour before painting with a light one'. This is true. However, we're not covering fresh plaster, or stains that could bleed through - so there's really no need for the sealing properties of primer. We have a can of base white, that'll work. (Do note, this works because it's what I have on hand - generally speaking you will find that a 4 ltr can of primer is a fair bit cheaper than a 4 ltr can of base white anything.)

Again due to the limited supply of paint, and the fact we don't want to completely destroy the man child's sense of self in his room we're only going to paint the top half and add a chair rail. It's all: looks architectural, saves paint, saves time, saves work, and solves the problem. We're all about the short cuts, BUT, ONLY AS LONG AS THEY WORK,. I know that sounds obvious, but it's not always. I try to save time and money and effort and reuse as much as possible; but, in the end, if it looks like it was put together using bailing wire and spit, or it's not safe, not to code, then it's time to think of a better solution. James and I work very hard at saving money (we don't have a lot to spend on this), but never at the expense of doing a job properly.

Prep Work:
Actually painting is about the smallest part of any painting job. The lion's share of the work is in the prep. What condition are the walls in? Do they need holes filled, cracks? If the walls are in truly dreadful condition consider re-drywalling them. For minor imperfections any plaster patching compound like Polyfilla will do. Things to consider. The higher the gloss level of a paint the more it will show imperfections, but the more scrubbable it will be. Flat paint won't show many wall imperfections, but will pick up every greasy hand print laid on it. This is why satins or eggshell finishes tend to be popular for general usage on walls and semi-gloss is traditionally used for trims, and kitchens and bathrooms - where scrubbability is important.

Now that the walls have any dings patched up and sanded, they need to be cleaned. In the case of this room the paint job on it was only 2 years old - but still general household dust and grime and cooking and ... well the walls still need cleaning first. I always use TSP, an excellent and inexpensive degreaser. Don't skimp on rinsing the residue off with a clear water and a rag after either. If you have had to patch with a plaster compound you will need to use a primer coat to seal the plaster.

There are a lot of methods one can use for doing the line on the wall for painting the upper half. Some are better than others, some are cooler than others. Me? I'm a bit of a gadget freak; a Rotary Laser Level Kit made the job exceptionally simple. However, if you don't have one on hand, and doing the job isn't sufficient excuse to go out and buy yourself an $80 laser toy you can always use a tape measure and a chalk line (helps to have two people available for this method). Last but not least a loooong level, a pencil and a tape measure, but this method is the most prone to error.

Cutting In:
Cutting in is the process of outlining the area to be painted to get the paint right into the corners, and to prevent your roller from getting paint on surfaces you don't want. The question, at least for me, is often, "to tape, or not to tape". I've done both, still often do, it's a matter for me of the size of the job, and my mood at the time. Tape is a bit finicky to put on and is time consuming of itself and a lot of professional painters do insist on taping. On the other hand, a steady hand, a bit of patience and some practice, it's not too hard to do freehand. I learned the knack of it from my older sister, a painting contractor who learned it from her painting contractor ex-husband. Generally speaking, I'll freehand the job if it's a smaller job overall, and I'm not feeling rushed about it. In some ways mindset has more to do with how neatly a job turns out than skill.

I use an angled brush for cutting in. Be careful not to overload the brush with paint, you don't want it dripping, then using the angle and holding the brush at about 45° to the wall, start away from the corner and draw a line into the corner noting at the tip of your bristles there is a small bead of paint. It's that bead you're actually painting with - your brush should never actually get tight into the corner. It does take a steady hand, and patience, and if it doesn't work for you use tape. No biggie.



The Painting:
You'd think that painting a wall with a roller would be a bit of a 'no brainer', but I've discovered the hard way over the years; it is possible to do it wrong.

Best advise, load your roller - but don't overload it. You want it saturated, but not dripping. Start your roll on in a wide W pattern - this prevents the first roll of the run from being thick with paint and the last overly thin.



Then work from left to right over the entire height of the wall keep the handle side of the roller to the right - the direction you're working in. The handle side receives more pressure, and thus releases more paint, if you work away from that you end up with lines in the paint, but if you work toward and roller over that area you end up with a much cleaner finish.



In the end painting the chair rail the same colour as the supper wall makes it hard to see in the photos and subtle in person, but trim touches like these do add a little something. You don't have to do crown moldings to give a ceiling a nice finished look - a bit of 1/4 round can give it the look of a nicely turned seam on a suit.



(In the end, we did a lot of patching the walls when we removed the baseboards for the purposes of redoing the floors - the remaining paint we had in his blue colour had spoiled and rotted. So again - we went with what we had - 4 ltrs of the blue from the Feychild's room. The final blue is a bit brighter now as well.)