Well, I survived the weekend…barely.  It was a tough war fought bravely by two warriors.  I won some battles and the walls won some battles but in the end, I won the war of the blue! 

What am I talking about?  Well, if you have been following my blog (please follow my blog!), you know that I am embarked on a painting odyssey.  This past weekend it was the battle of the Dutch Tile Blue! 

In this corner, an overly ambitious blonde with a keen eye for color and possibilities (boy does she need a reality check!).  In the other corner, two blank walls screaming out for accent color to start the whole personalization process.  The walls brought friends though that I had to take care of before I could tackle them (cheaters!) 

I had to do some major touch up painting from when I had the drywall peeps out to repair some seams that were coming apart.  So, here is the patch process…thankfully the homebuilders left me some of the existing paint (which I then color matched for even more.)

La, la, la…boring…still the same Santa Fe color that the house was painted with….

After that and a VERY large cup of coffee, I decided to move the furniture in my dining room so I could tackle the wall.  My extremely heavy dining table and 40 bottle wine frig (which sadly only has 3 bottles...hint hint…send me wine!).  You know something is heavy when you have to get down on the floor, wedge yourself in behind it and push with your legs at the bottom to get them moving.  So here is the room cleared out (don’t hate the messy, hate the mess people…I do but no one will come clean it up for me)

Hello test patch and table chaos...

Then I commenced with the taping process since I did not want paint EVERYWHERE.  I typically use the standard blue painters tape but decided to give the green Frogstape a try as I had been hearing good things about it.  On the positive note, it is nice and wide, sticks well to the wall without pulling of paint (or much…about that in a moment).  The bad, I seriously cannot lay down a straight line to save my life and tape bleed happens when you have textured walls (more on a solution to that in a moment).  And a painting we will go!  I started with cutting in around the tape with a 2 inch angled brush:

Please ignore the terrible builder light fixture that seems to pop up like a weed in all the pictures.  That is SO getting replaced!

And then used a ¾ inch wool roller which seemed to fill in quite nicely…at first.  Dude, textured walls totally suck to paint!  I had to go back over once all the paint dried and hit the patches where you could see the original color.  But in the end, I only needed to do one coat of paint! Total score on that!  I am digging the Sherwin Williams paint for this very reason

Mmm..suedey -  The paint is still in the drying stage.  After dry, it is a nice flat

So, Saturday was dedicated to the dining room wall.  After a nap, some well earned food, and a good night’s sleep, I was ready to tackle the BIG WALL.  The wall in the living room is 16 ft long by 9 ft high…that is 144 square feet ya’ll…big project for me but I had backup coming over after lunchtime. 

This time, after taping all the seams, I used some of the leftover wall paint to seal the edges of the tape so that I would not have bleed…I had seen instances of this but the thought of having to cut in the wall twice was not something I wanted to do in the dining room. So I shortcutted that room and am paying for it with an artist brush and wall paint. Dude.  Anyway, here is the wall taped and cut in with the tan color.

Using my brain this time!

For the outside edge on this wall, I was confounded as I had heard they were extremely difficult for an amateur to handle.  So I taped the wall but left the tape hanging over the edge:

Totally makes more sense with the pic doesn't it!

Then I cut in this section carefully just like I did with the rest of the wall.  Once leaving it to dry for an hour, I then started cutting in with the blue.  About this time, I had been taping and painting for close to three hours (including touch up paint here and there) so I was ready to pass out with hunger.  This is when Christie (thanks Christie even though you were not feeling well!) came over to help me out.  So the combined powers of the Two Chicks made blue paint magic and all it took was the sacrifice of one paint roller!  So that was the good part.  The bad part is when I pulled off the tape from the outside edge, it also pulled off some of the paint off the other wall...man!  Good news is that line is most excellent…bad news is more work for that artist brush.

Voila!  Wall painted!

But now I am second guessing my estimate of painting the entire master bedroom and bathroom next weekend.  That includes ceiling space and up to three colors total.  That is a lot and I know I am amazing and all but just thinking about it makes me want to hide under the couch…and that space is only like three inches tall….anyone want to help?

Lessons learned:

1.       Don’t do major workouts each morning you are going to spend the day painting.  I was physically exhausted when done.  I barely had the energy to change the channel on the remote control peeps so that is tired.

2.      I know I am wonder woman and all but even I have my limits.

3.      Painting is always more fun with wine. Always.

So here is the deal...neither room is complete so I do not have any of the pretty "after" photos.  That will have to wait until I get all the artwork matted and framed as well as the side table for the dining room found, purchased, and fancified. But that is a blog post to come at a later time.  At this point, the painting is complete in these two rooms and looks fab if I do say so myself!

Shelley