Paint Specks

I don't like the little specks of paint that one finds on furniture after a room has been painted. The Man of the Place hates them even more. The reason for his hatred of paint specks goes deep. When he was growing up, just about every stick of furniture that his parents owned had paint specks on it. His parents were lovely but not careful about covering furniture when painting, thinking that being careful with the brush or roller would be enough.

Old paint spatters. Can you see them?

Last weekend, I had the honour of removing some ancient parental paint specks from a piece of furniture that we've pulled out of storage. This small wardrobe used to belong to my late father-in-law. It is typical of English post WWII furniture. It will go into the room I am painting just now along with all our bookshelves. I used fine steel wool and paste style wax polish and got almost all the paint specks off. There is one side left to do, and I'll get to it this weekend sometime. When I finished working on it last weekend, The Man of the Place exclaimed that he didn't even know that it had brass knobs and hinges. He thought they were always black.

This week after work and after dinner each night, I have spent an hour or two painting the room that used to be George's bedroom. It took a couple of days to get the ceiling painted. It was blue and the matt white that is a more traditional coating for ceilings needed the application of two good coats before the blue didn't peek through anymore.

Naturally before a single tin of paint is opened, the room must be prepared. I removed all but the heavy sofa bed and then started in with the masking tape. All the skirting boards (in the US they are base boards) needed to be topped off with masking tape and the window sills covered with newspaper and tape. I didn't remove the light and plug plates, but I did loosen all the screws and used lots of masking tape to protect them all from the dreaded paint spatters.

The entire floor has been covered in two huge plastic sheets. I know that if I didn't do this, I'd step in a paint drip and then track it unknowingly all over the house.

The colour is called Pebble Beach. It is a nice neutral stone colour. You can see that when I've painted the walls, I've left a two inch gap all the way around the top. This is so the edges can be done by somebody else who is much more skilled and careful (NOT fussy) than I am about edges.

After this blog entry is finished, I will be removing the radiator and painting behind that as well. While the radiator is off, it will be getting some much needed maintenance and a new coat or two of paint.

That's my life. Work. Clean the house. Paint stuff.