Random dumb thoughts
This page is to put those little weirdnesses of life that don't really fit anywhere else, or aren't worth a page of their own
Saturday, June 19, 2004
I have resolved that if it is the last thing I do, I will hunt down the person who invented acoustical "popcorn" ceilings. They are now painted, and I don't care if the roof caves in, they will never be painted again as long as I live.
At first, I thought I was going to roll the ceilings with a special roller, but I started that in the closet as a tester, and little pieces of ceiling came down. Not enough, however, to have the end result be non-popcorn ceilings, so it was decided that rolling the ceilings was a bad thing, which would also take forever.
A colleague at work owned a paint sprayer. "Aha!" say I. "I shall borrow this sprayer and make short work of the ceilings". I taped down some parts of the fixtures and windows, read the instructions, and started spraying. Well, what goes up must come down. And sideways. And diagonally. All I can say is thank heavens I haven't painted the walls yet, and the nice man is going to come and sand, strip and refinish my floors.
So we also run out of paint after just the bedroom, so the next corollary of home improvement kicks in -- "no job is complete without an extra trip to Home Despot". So I buy FOUR more gallons of paint (non-returnable). We do manage to make it through three of those four, so now I'm stuck with an extra gallon of Fragrant Jasmine ceiling paint. It would have taken a lot less paint if the paint had wound up on the ceiling and not on EVERY surface in the room. And me. However, I have discovered that latex comes off much more easily than primer.
And tomorrow I'm gonna finish the bathroom, come hell or high water. Sleep? Who needs it?
Sunday, June 13, 2004
Some things I learned today:
1. Painting over switchplates and outlets should be a capital offense. It's really not that hard to take them off the wall, when they're NOT painted over.
2. Crayola has no trouble getting the color "red" right. You'd think that the millions of paint companies out there would have one true red in the millions of paint chips they put out, not pink or orange. Of course, I haven't even started to try to get "white" right.
3. Spackling isn't that hard. So why do people just leave holes in the walls for years?
4. Popcorn ceilings are EVIL. Spawn of satan.
5. Having a washing machine is very, very nice. I'm not sure it was worth as much as it cost me, but it's nice.
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