I spent the majority of last week painting feverishly because I was dying to finish it before I had to head back. The thought of having to come back in a few months and put on all my painty clothes and climb up the ladder again made my skin crawl so I worked pretty ceaselessly to get it done. It was so exhausting but now it's done and I can share pictures with you! (TONNES of pictures, you've been warned!).
Our house seems to be rather odd when you first go inside. Basically there are two massive rooms on the ground floor, one is next to the kitchen and the other (my room, the red room) is at the end of the corridor. We thought it was pretty much common sense that you use the room next to the kitchen as a living room but it seems that they'd been using it as a master bedroom (because they'd painted it a totally alarming shade of pink). So being the ex-lounge my new bedroom was red and it was a real shame because it was the only room in the house that didn't really need painting. However all of my things are so bright that I knew they would only clash with the red, and besides white makes everything look bigger, right?
I'd never really painted a room before and so the tips I am about to show you are courtesy of an absolute novice who has experienced the baptism of fire that is painting a 300sqft room with cornices and base boards.
So my first step would be to tape off everything you don't want covered. As in everything. Doors, fireplaces, little features on the wall, the floor. I had one two few dust sheets to totally cover the floor and so thought "ha! I'll just be careful in that area" sadly I was wrong and paint goes everywhere. This was a really really dull step because being careful with anything always takes forever and at first you want to just get going. But it does save a tonne of clearing up time and it is kinda great to just be able to bundle all of the dust sheets into a bin bag and it's clean.
My next step was painting corners, edges and details. I have base boards and loads of awkward alcoves that needed painting since the roller couldn't fit there so I had to do them all by hand on top of a ladder. Urgh. Very rubbish. These areas, especially the corners, will need a tonne of coats, usually more coats that the main wall to hide brush strokes.
It was this point that I realised I didn't really like painting all that much.
Also Beaton (Don't worry, I'm planning on doing a little introduction series on everyone I'm living with soon...they're psyched) was being really annoying and just drawing on the walls.
However he did bring me a midday coffee and croissant so he's sort of excused. Seriously the best croissant of my life; that little morsel was filled with chocolate patisserie cream. Yummmm.
To cut a long story short, it is quite hard to paint over a dark, vibrant colour with white. I had anticipated three coats, maybe four, but in reality that turned into eight. Eight exhausting coats. I'd never realised how tiring painting is! Because of the height of the rooms I was having to use on of the those rollers with poles on the end which sort of require a weird pushing action and just made my back ache like crazy. On top of that I had the hardest time because there is currently no running water at the flat. I was having to run across to the pub every time I needed the loo and simply put up with paint going everywhere. I felt so grimy, it was gross.
However I am now done! This is the only picture I'm sharing at the moment because I have more to share later, but I am really pleased with how it looks. It's so light! It's like living in one big light box and I love it. What's more it makes it look so much bigger and airy. I cannot wait to live here guys...but I'm dreading painting that pink living room. Urgh.
