Painting the house

Thunder Maker and I bought the house we live in about a year prior to conceiving Seagull. It's a pretty big house and someone who had lived here previously had painted the walls in all the public areas a lovely shade of off-brown. Given that sarcasm is not immediately apparent in the written word, let me assure you that the shade of the paint leaves a lot to be desired. My main issue with it is that it makes the place seem dark and dingy.

After about a year, we decided that we couldn't live with the horrible colour and decided to repaint it. We spent a considerable amount of time at the paint counter of our local hardware store debating what colours we wanted to use. The lady at the paint counter thought that the way we argued debated over different colours was hilarious. In the end we bought some green paint and got to work on a feature wall in our dining area.

The feature wall looks gorgeous. We picked the particular shade of green that we used to compliment a painting that hangs on the wall and we were very pleased with our efforts. About a week later, I found out that I was pregnant with Seagull. Not one to let pregnancy get in the way of a project, we went back to the hardware shop and bought more paint to do the other walls.

 The green wall

Our intention had been to get to work on the remainder of the walls the following weekend, but I started feeling incredibly sick and couldn't stand for more than a few minutes without feeling faint so the painting was temporarily put on hold. By the time I started feeling better again in the second trimester, painting was fairly low down my priority list. To be honest, I think Thunder Maker may have had something to do with convincing me that painting whilst pregnant might not be the smartest move.

The 10 litre tin of paint has been sitting in my laundry since we first bought it. Seeing as we are moving in about 8 weeks time, I've put a rocket up Thunder Maker and told him that it needs to be done, especially as he wants to rent the house out. Today I got the tin of paint out and took it down to the hardware shop. The lady at the paint counter told me that she wasn't game to put it in the paint mixer because it was looking a bit rusted and she didn't feel like having to clean up 10L of paint if it exploded. I took it home and spent 30 minutes mixing it with a big stick.

Thunder Maker and I figured that we could probably get the longest wall done while the boys were asleep. Except they didn't stay asleep for very long. They must have used that sixth sense that kids seem to have for when you are doing something you don't want them involved in to know when to wake up. It was a nice day, so I turfed them both out in the back yard. Don't worry, we could see and hear them from where we were working.

The wall we decided to tackle today runs continuously for nearly the length of our entire house, starting in the dining room, going past the kitchen and finishing on the other end of the lounge room. We figured out pretty quickly that I am crap at operating a roller and that Thunder Maker isn't the greatest at cutting in the edges, so we swapped jobs. Thunder Maker still has to cut in the edges up higher because the wall meets the highest edge of the cathedral style roof and I am too short to reach up that high, even on a ladder. I'm telling you, cathedral ceilings suck big time. I would never buy a house with cathedral ceilings again.

 The corner of the cathedral ceiling. The whitish wall has just had its first coat of paint.

Between interruptions, I got all the cutting in done that I could reach and Thunder Maker got about 2/3 of the rolling done of the first coat of paint. Already the areas that have been done look a lot better. I was keen to get it finished, but Thunder Maker had had enough. I'm hoping that he decides to finish it off tomorrow while the boys are having their afternoon nap. Thunder Maker said that he is going to have a go at getting all the other walls done on Wednesday and Thursday while Seagull is at childcare and he only has one child to worry about.

Hopefully we don't get all sidetracked this time and actually get it done before we move. Hopefully we get it all done by next weekend. Wombat's birthday is on Thursday and we are having some friends over on the weekend for his birthday. I've told Thunder Maker that it has to be done by then because I'm not inviting people into our house with half-painted rooms.