Monday, March 30, 2009

what would Anna do?

So I have a problem... a big one... in my dining room.

See, the people who owned and decorated before me, shall now forever be known in this blog as Idiots With Paintbrushes, or IWP. The idiocy in the dining room goes far beyond the peach, seafoam green and olive green spongepainting debacle I found under the wallpaper. Remember, these are also the people who sponged the living room and put up two lighthouse borders. And spongepainted the kitchen white and green with burgundy borders. All with a rectangular kitchen sponge, I might add...

Here is my latest problem. They used texture paint on the top half of the wall. They papered the bottom half. They put a border down the middle of the wall and the top of the wall. I removed the wallpaper and found that the texture paint is only where they did not paper.

So, I have smooth walls on the bottom half of the wall, and for a couple inches around the top. And the top half of the walls are textured (except the few inches around the top since a border was there). And this is not a straight line of textured vs. smooth -- they did it slap-dash. Perhaps they were drunk?

Anyway... there is a blog I read religiously called "Door Sixteen." D16 is written by Anna, a fellow old home owner who engages in projects a lot like mine. Anna, I have found, to be very meticulous. She mentioned once spending half a day sealing grout with a tiny paintbrush. Yeah, more meticulous than me I am afraid.

So, I am standing in my dining room. Near tears. Pondering... What would Anna do? What would Anna do?? Anna's room are always perfect. Must... be... like.. Anna... Must... do... as... Anna...

Maybe do a skim coat over all the walls and make them all flat? Taking forever to skim everything, wait for it to dry and then sand? HORRORS!!!!

But what would Sarah Beth do? Try to add sand to my primer and sadly fail at matching the smooth part to the sandy part?

I actually thought about doing board and batten or beadboard on the smooth part... but realized that our baseboards would be a nightmare to install paneling against. Yikes!

So I ask ya...
What would YOU do?

7 comments:

Anna @ D16 said...

Anna recommends a glass of wine, first of all!

Hang on, let me read this over again...

Anna @ D16 said...

Okay, the textured part, is it sand?

The front room on my second floor was painted with glossy MAUVE paint that had sand mixed into it. Horrors. The only solution was to sand it down as well as possible, and then skim coat the entire thing.

My kitchen had the sand paint, too, but it was also on the moldings! No skim coating possible there, so I had to sand, sand, sand....

Yes, it will suck and you will want to die, but it's the only solution.

Check out this craziness! This is in my friend's house -- that's tissue paper glued onto the walls!! There are crazy "treatments" like this ALL OVER the house. Nightmares!

puck said...

Thank you!!!

This stuff is bumpier than sandpaint. Like heavy grit sandpaper...

I have the palm sander out and will make a first pass at that.... this will be a huge deal. Yuck.

Oh, and they did sand on the moldings, too.

Amy said...

Hi. I have been a lurker for awhile and I have to say I am amazed at how many projects you guys take on and how fast you are blowing through them. Are you taking steroids???

But seriously, I would take the time to sand and skim coat those walls even though it will be a huge pain and you will think of a million different ways you could torture the previous owners. You obviously take so much pride in your house, if you try to fake it with some other technique, it will always bug you.

Good Luck!!

puck said...

Heh... well... not steroids, maybe ADHD! ;)

I think sanding the walls is a good first step. Steven likes the textured paint, so we might sand, skip the skim coat, do a textured primer, and more on to painting.

Besides... I bought stripper today to start stripping the white paint off the upstairs hallway floor.

I think meth would probably get me moving faster on projects. And be a totally great diet to help me lose 10 pounds... but the whole "poor dental health" really doesn't work for me. ;)

Susan S said...

I don't know if this product is something that might work for you, but I just left the blog of Brooke Giannetti of Velvet & Linen where she posted a bathroom and mentions the wall treatment using a product called California One-Kote. Here's her site:http://brookegiannetti.typepad.com/velvet_and_linen/2009/03/my-interior-design-style.html#comments

Here's her reply to Teresa(along w/ the product link):

We stumbled upon California one kote quite by accident. One of our dry wall installers was using it on a job. When he was finished covering the dry wall Steve and I were amazed at how beautiful it looked. We convinced our client not to paint over it. It really does have a great glow.
Here is a link with more info.
http://www.westernblended.com/materials/California%20One-Kote%20&%20Kwik%20Patch.pdf

xo
Brooke

puck said...

Susan - That product sounds interesting! I will look into it. I will be doing drywall in Bowie's room and am sad that it will look like drywall. If this makes it look more like plaster - I'd be thrilled!