Paint job in progress.

We thrashed it out this weekend and Monday I went and bought the paint we agreed on (Benjamin Moore Normandy for the walls and Devon cream for the trim).

I'm halfway done, but the weather shifted on me, so the rest will be delayed until I can have the windows open again.

I've got the grey on the walls, but I need to touch up the ceilings and do the trim.

Here's Fuzzy posing on the curtains....

use a few bristles cut from a paint-brush to make a very small brush for.

I learned that from an old painter.

It works great for nicks and scratches on older paint-jobs too.

:hi:

The painter I learned from told me to use Q-tips for tiny stuff which makes sense in arid climates - washing out brushes takes a lot of water. And for REALLY tiny stuff, I have some art brushes I don't use with acrylics anymore.

I'm a little pissed with Ben Moore, though - the can and the calculator both said that 1 gallon covers 400 square feet, but I barely made it to 350 square feet, so I had to go get another quart.

What are you gonna do? They all bush their sq. footage I guess.

Our local outlet just has hundreds of little bottles all lined up, so saturday I went in and bought half a dozen of them and painted stripes on all four walls in 6 different greys. Normandy ended up being the one we liked best.

It's so much easier to do it that way than with the little paint chips....

To keep the trim paint from bleeding under the edge of the tape onto the wall, first mask off the wall with the 2" Long Mask tape. Next, paint a line of paint onto the seam between the molding and the tape, similar to the color of the wall. In other words, should the wall be beige, paint the seam with beige; should the wall be red, paint the seam with red, and so on.

Let this dry, then paint over this with the molding color. The wall color that you painted on the seam will seep under the edge of the tape, and seal the edge, preventing any trim paint from bleeding under. (Should the trim paint be oil based, and the wall latex, after the seam paint has dried, use a damp rag, or one with a little denatured alcohol, and wipe the wall color off the trim. This will not affect the color that seeped under the edge).

Last time we painted, I pulled them off and painted them separately (since we were resurfacing the floors anyway) so this time I ran plaster over the top edges of the baseboards to blend them into the walls. The floors are never going to be changed if I can help it.

My big problem with masking is that I'm short and have bad knees - even with my step-stools, I can't reach the top of the walls in most of the house, or can only reach part of the top of the walls - some rooms have retro-fitted vaulted ceilings (the attic removed); others just have high ceilings. So I have to have the ladder, and on bad knee days, that's just stupid. If DH shouldn't be trusted with power tools, I should not be trusted with ladders.

The mask tape comes off as soon as I'm done with a wall (I mask one wall, paint, then unmask, repeat) because masking tape gets stickier the longer it stays on. So there is usually very little time for bleed to occur.

Krud Kutter takes off latex paint, too.

much like my kitchen paint scheme

very very pretty

Just free hand it. I watched how the painters who painted my current house did it when I moved in a few years back. I just keep a damp cloth handy to wipe off when I make a boo-boo.

was painting slum student apartments in Boston. The slumlord didn't think a woman could handle such hard work (idiot). I retaliated by learning how to "cut" windows and woodwork freehand faster than anybody else on any of his crews, a skill I possess to this day.

Taping is fine when you've got time to burn and will probably result in a superior job for most people. However, practice and a steady hand makes it unnecessary for people who do a lot of painting.

Being able to cut a line saves time AND makes for a better job if done correctly. Tape always seems to remove paint from the taped area and it "tears" the new work.

better if you have the steady hand for it

Especially if I've have a martini the night before.

Love gray, love Ben Moore! Cute kitty, too.

Unlike our little girl cat, he hates the camera. I got bitched at for a good 10 minutes because I took his picture.

In that, he is my husband's cat.