Friday, May 06, 2011

Primed and Ready

We've been working on this back room renovation for about two months now. A lot of diy blogs that you see show the befores and afters pretty quickly, and maybe those people actually do work that fast, but around here we're pretty slow going. We are getting close to the finish line though and we just got one step closer to getting there.The room is all primed and ready to paint now.


We got an oil based primer (I've heard really good things about Zinsser primer, so we went with that one), and I pretty much followed this tutorial. It was pretty easy at first, I just got all my supplies ready and started rolling it out on the wall that we put the new paneling on a few weeks ago. It was rolling on pretty easily, and I was pretty optimistic about getting done really quickly and maybe even getting both coats of paint on. The inevitable problem that always keeps diy projects from going as easily as planned reared its' ugly head though in the form of the original paneling that had been on the wall when we started the project.


The valleys, for lack of a better word were too deep for the roller to reach, so each of them had to be primed by hand, which increased the length of time spent priming significantly.


The primer is pretty thick and sticks ridiculously well to everything, so we just get a cheap old paint brush at the local hardware store (usually less than a dollar) and throw it away after we've used it.


I have to admit that the priming was slow going, but after lunch I came up with the idea to turn on "Friends" to watch listen to while priming and it made the whole experience much more enjoyable (Jake was out of town while I was priming, so I just blasted the tv so that I could hear it throughout the house). One disc of "Friends" later and this was the result.


It took a while, and I made sure to open the windows and run a fan while I was back there in order to get those odors out of the house as quickly as possible. And for anyone that's wondering, the primer really does seem to stick well, I've been unsuccessful at getting it out of my hair still three washes later.


Now all that's left is to paint the walls, ceiling and trim and then the room will be ready for some pictures, curtains and blinds, and lots of company to come use the newly made-over room! We're planning to have the grand re-opening of the back room at our Annual Memorial Day party, and I think the deadline will help us stay focused through the last few weeks of the project.

Anyone else out there do some painting or priming recently? Or maybe you have a favorite tv show that you blast throughout the house while you're doing house work? I'll probably have to crank up the "Friends" or maybe "How I Met Your Mother" again whenever the time to paint (hopefully tomorrow) comes around again.

1 comment:

  1. friends makes everything go by faster...and better. :) good choice.

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