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…and we finally finish painting

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I realized I sort of left you hanging about our paint job. The truth is, I’m actually still not 100% super duper totally satisfied with my edges, but we did receive white paint from the workers and I went up to the kitchen ceiling immediately and began fixing the tape goofs.

Wow, look how much better that edge looks now! It was easy to get the green looking nice, but I had the darnedest time with the purple, especially around the frame of the entry door because the workers botched that up already and had painted white all over the side of the frame, so it was hard to tell what was what and get a good line.

I’m kind of “done” with touchups for awhile though. I spent a couple weeks touching up the walls here and there, including filling in some more paint where the second coat still had not got it completely colored.

These are the results!

The green in the kitchen really is just a little  bit, but I love how it makes the room pop and look much more fresh and lively than when it was all white. And from the entry to the kitchen you can see both colors and how it compares to our paint inspiration.

Kay and I both really like the purple. It is not too dark, but it is nice and rich and it makes a big statement when you are in the room. It almost makes me want to paint another wall, if it weren’t so annoying to buy a good brush in this country!

The living room still looks lost and empty without much furniture… and we really need to go ahead and get the lamp for the dining table that we have our eyes on… it’s just that we want (OK, I want…) a second couch and it’s hard to know where the table should go permanently before we’ve got the second couch there.

What a sad little lonely light it is right now… and curtain-less windows. Sigh. But we bought fabric in the US in September and I’ve got some projects planned and underway for those windows!

Moral of the story? Don’t tape unless it’s really helpful, because 99% of the time it is unhelpful and takes forever. Waste of both time and money and more time!

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To tape or not to tape

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I have painted in houses before so I’m not totally inexperienced, but one thing I am a little unfamiliar with is painter’s tape. Why do you need it?

Kay, who has never painted anything in a house before, is pretty certain that every painter in Switzerland uses tape (even though our painters clearly did not use it anywhere in the flat) and for as long as we have talked about painting the house, he has talked about how we have to do it properly and tape. As we prepare to paint, I’ve been researching more about the pros and cons of using tape and what it might mean for us.

Pros of using tape:

  • Clean line
  • Straight line
  • Professionals do it (is that a real reason?)

Cons of using tape:

  • Pulling tape off dry paint may pull paint up from wall
  • Pulling tape off wet paint may touch or smear wet paint
  • Pulling tape off wet paint might cause wet tape to get paint on non-painted surfaces
  • Color can go under tape and ruin the straight line (this is my biggest fear)
  • Tape could pull wallpaper off wall (we have pretty flimsy, fragile wallpaper)
  • Takes a long time to put up and remove tape

There are actually enough bad things that can happen with tape that I kind of want to just paint the walls when Kay is gone and tape up what I want, but not everything. But Kay thinks the lines will look like shit if I don’t use tape and that I’ll get paint on the ceiling.

Do you use tape when you paint? Where do you use it?