We Call It a Room

In the light of day, the ceiling still needed another coat of paint (we only did one last night, plus some touchups, so this was not unexpected). We ran over some parts of the ceiling and then moved on to do the lower part of the walls. We still needed to tape off for the tops of the walls, so that had to wait until the ceiling was done-done, but nothing was keeping us from doing the bottoms.

And it's a good thing we did, too, because we got perilously low on wall paint and Noel had to go out and find a place that sells Aura and was open on Christmas Eve. There's just a lot more wall in this room than in the Front Parlour (it's several feet larger in each direction, and has no enormous pocket door).

(By the way, these pictures convince me that a dramatic crown molding would look really wrong in this room. I'd like a picture rail for the ease of hanging art, but how to put it into this space will be a challenge.)

The real setback of the day was when we were untaping the ceiling, and the primer just started peeling off. A cursory search of the net gives us a few possible reasons: damp walls (there might be some residual moisture from the leaks, but it would have to be from last winter), plaster that was too smooth (but the peeling happened over the drywall mud), insufficient drying time for the paint (can recommends 8 hours, we did more than 12), too thick a coat (definitely not the case here). I'm thinking it may be some of all of the above.

This is where the worst of it happened, right where the eternal seeping stain was over the arch. That brown stuff is tannins from the wood.

The paint didn't just flake off; it came off in great sheets: this one was 16 inches long.

We took down what would peel away, then just painted over the bare patch and hoped for the best. At this point we were tired enough of the painting that we're willing to redo it if and when it peels again.

We have one more coat of paint to put on the fields, and then we can take the masking tape down and call it a room. Of course, right after Christmas we're going to rip up the floor and see what happens, so maybe we should not be so cocky about this room yet.

Technorati Tags: painting, plaster, renovations

posted by ayse on 12/24/09