When the dust settles…

I always forget the mess and annoyance of painting until it’s time to start the next project. It’s the prep that kills you. Prepping takes twice as long as the actual painting, and it’s far messier.

We’re repainting the hallway and the kitchen/dining/living room, starting with the hallway and working out from there. Due to the previous owners lack of construction knowledge or just plain cheapness, we had to replace a sizable chunk of drywall and put screws near the seams. Apparently, when they redid the drywall at some point, they neglected to use tape on the seams and just packed on the mud. So Kevin sanded and sanded to try to make it presentable. Then we had to add more mud to smooth it out and that meant even more sanding. So the dust storm started.

Then we began the actual paint prep process, which involved puckying the holes in the walls and scraping down the old mouldings around the doors. We tried using an electric pad sander on the moulding, but that created too much dust. So we’ve been scraping by hand. There are about 5 coats of paint on the mouldings (they’re original to the house), so it’s quite interesting to see the color combinations created by the paint coming off in varying layers. And there was obviously no prep work done on them, so they paint comes off fairly easily.

The best part was that we had some potential renters come by to see the house this past Saturday right in the middle of the paint-stripping adventure. Our agent, who was unfortunately out of town that day, called at 10:30am to ask me if the people could stop by around 11:30. Kevin was out of the house at a union thing. And I’m standing there covered in paint chips with a bandanna over my hair, wearing some of Kev’s ratty work clothes. Sure, a showing in an hour. Why not?

I had to rush to clean up the house to make it presentable by 11:30. And since our agent wasn’t available, I ended up giving them the grand tour dressed like a vagabond. What a lovely first impression! I did tell them that we were in the process of repainting, so hopefully they understood. They were a nice couple from London whose situation was strikingly similar to ours. They seemed like good people and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

We got the entire hallway primed on Sunday and Kevin finished caulking around the mouldings. Now it’s ready for paint, which will happen this weekend. Once that is completed, we’ll start the front room, which will be somewhat more complicated with more windows, the kitchen cabinets, etc.

The whole process is a pain, but the outcome will be well worth it. There is nothing better than a fresh coat of paint (or two) to clean up a space. I’ve been wanting to add some color to these areas for quite a while, but now the trip has given us the incentive to get on it.

But there is still a fine coat of dust on everything. Sigh.