Post-paint, pre-bed brain jumble dump

(c) 2008 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

I just finished cleaning up after painting the bottom half of the bathroom. 'Cuz I was going to finish it, gosh-darn it! I mean, it's such a small amount of square footage that we only bothered to get a quart of paint to cover it, and I think I used half. BUT THE TIME IT TOOK! Sheesh! I taped during the day, but waited for to paint until the girls were in bed. (Well, and The Mentalist was over, but I folded a load of laundry, sewed on a button and reinforced two more, and fixed a hole in a sock all during the show, so it wasn't like that was wasted time exactly.)

YESTERDAY I painted the top half of the bathroom, which is definitely more square footage, with a lovely shade of white called White Hyacinth. It's a white with just the hint of yellow that comes from the sun on the grass that the cows eat that shows up in their cream. A white with a warmth and richness to it, the barest hint of sun to it to work on your subconscious and convince you that getting up early is not quite the end of the world. I started that late-ish, too, but was done by 10ish. And I think it looks really nice.

But today's paint I'm not so sure about. It's a darkish blue with maybe a hint of battleship to it, especially before it dried. I liked the idea the bathroom paint job - dark blue, and white with a hint of yellow - and it looked nice on the paint samples. Heck, it was one of the pre-put-together groupings on the Sherwin-Williams Arts and Crafts paint brochure. (We're trying to stick with that for historical accuracy, plus reduced number of otherwise-overwhelming choices. Have you SEEN the number of "almost white" shades there are?! And that's only one color!!!) Oh yeah, it's called Bunglehouse Blue. But I hope we didn't bungle choosing it!

But I don't know. It might be a bit too much for the very small bathroom. Too much change/variety for too small a space. Or maybe I'm just not used to it yet. I tend to be "Oh, ok, um, change?" and it takes me a little while to warm up to newness. Not that I don't like new things, but, for example, when I team-taught, it was always my teammate(s) who would instigate room rearrangements. I tended to really like how we ended up rearranging our space, but it always took me a couple of days to get used to it. So part of my ambivalence could very definitely be improved by time.

But, oh, did I mention the PAIN in the BUTT today's painting was?! No? Argh! You see, the top half of the bathroom we stripped/steamed/scraped/washed and then primed, and so I was painting on a ready-to-go surface. Today... well, I don't know what sort of paint the previous owner used over that evil calcimine paint, but the new paint did. not. like. it. at. all. It clung to the brush and/or roller like a reluctant kindergartner on the first day of school. Seriously, I would paint and the pigment would try to stick to the roller instead of staying on the wall. It left all these tiny pinpricks and empty marks on the wall, sort of like when you peel off tape that's been on a surface too long and it takes little bits and parts of the color? Like that. And I couldn't touch up/paint over it until it'd at least partially dried or the semi-dry paint would want to lift right off the wall even more! *(&*@%@%#$!!!!!

The only good part about painting today was that I managed to paint behind the radiator completely (well, other than the pinpricks, but you can't see those there!). It was a case of small, narrow paint roller meets stir-stick, with a side order of duct tape. Hey, it worked, and I wasn't left with a big white void behind the radiator, so yay!

But I ended up with too many thoughts rolling and bumping around in my head after spending several hours in a small room (with exhaust fan running!) with only paint fumes and the radio to keep me company, and couldn't therefore go right to bed, or I'd end up lying there trying to decide if I like the paint or not, and what to do if I don't, and which color(s) should we use then, and if the room should be all one color (excepting the white tile) or if we should split it at the wooden ... well, not chair rail 'cuz it's at eye level, so what'd you call it then?... and on and on and on. So thanks, any of y'all who actually read this far, for bearing with me while I cleared out my brain.

So now I'll say good night to you, and to the sky I can see out the window that's the strange pink color that means the light pollution is bouncing off the new-fallen snow (yay, shovelling tomorrow - :P ) and making it seem much too light outside for midnight. But midnight it is, and morning will be here all too soon. G'night.