Lessons in Paint

Now that motorbike season is over, and the weather is turning, there's been some progress on the house.

Way back in July, when the cabinets were being worked on and paint was being purchased, I bought paint for the walls in the kitchen. When we moved in, it was a pale yellow color, and it was ok, but given that neither of us is really a big fan of yellow, and the whole outside of our house is yellow, we decided to change it.

The new color is Obstinate Orange, appropriate to me since I wanted something more muted, but the hub really wanted something bright. He won. After a week of working on it, and a little more to do I have a few comments on this process.

1. Semi-gloss paint is the devil if you have an old house. It shows EVERY flaw.

2. Semi-gloss paint doesn't like to stick to old semi gloss very well, and so especially when painting something in the bright and dark end of the spectrum, you MUST use a primer. Three coats and a gallon into it, and the splotchyness is mostly taken care of.

We now have a very shiny, and very orange kitchen. It's actually a deeper, redder orange than I thought it would be. I'm not down with the shine, so for a final coat with a new gallon of paint, I may ask if I can use eggshell.

3. Since the old paint was semi-gloss, and I made the mistake of not using primer, I really should have TSP'd the walls to at least clean them and cut the shine of the old paint. Oh well.

4. Since the house is old, the corners where the walls meet the ceiling are not really very straight, and so making a nice, crisp line around the ceiling between the dark orange and the white ceiling is nearly impossible. There's a wood trim piece that goes all the way around the kitchen about a foot down from the ceiling. I should have just painted that part white. would have saved SO much time and energy, and probably would have lightened the room and looked better. I may still do this.