Guest Room, Part 2: Painter's Tape Boogaloo

And the winner is...

"Talipot Palm" from Sherwin-Williams!

HA! Just kidding.

I handed my dad my laptop with all of the virtually-painted examples of colors, and he made two surprising choices, one of which was...

"Country Squire" by Sherwin-Williams! Ding ding ding! In a shocking turn of events, my dad chose a bold, almost dark color for the guest room! Color me surprised! (Well, color me Country Squire because that's what I'm covered in right now...)

Here's the mock-up from the SW website:

The mock-up is actually more accurate than my photo above for three reasons:

1) My photo is only one layer of paint; it now has two layers and has evened out.

2) It was a cloudless, 100-degree day today, and I took down the blinds for ease of painting, so all of my in-progress photos are overexposed.

3) I actually got the paint chip color-matched at Home Depot, so any slight color variations might be connected to that.

Here are more angles:

This is actually Behr's satin paint with the Sherwin-Williams "Country Squire" paint chip color-matched to it.

Ahh, nothing like seeing the clear outlines of the paint colors I'd sampled earlier in the week. I re-primered them but I think sanding was the real solution.

It's photographing a lot bluer than it really is (maybe from the painter's tape, maybe from the light) but when I was first cutting in along the ceiling, it was so green it was almost black. It taught me a valuable lesson: Don't freak out too soon. All was well once the rolling started.

I did a second layer all by myself (the cutting in and trim already had two layers) and it looks much better now.

I'm not a professional painter, obviously, and I don't know if there's a proper method to rolling, but that's how I do it--with two hands. I apply lots of pressure and put my whole body into it. Like I said, that could be the wrong "technique" but it's worked for me.

I went to remove the painter's tape while the second coat was still drying, and that's when I experienced my first Hulk-out over this entire project.

NO! Why, painter's tape? Why?!

I didn't fight my mum on the Frog Tape vs. Scotch's Blue Painter's Tape front because, frankly, even though I'm an avid fan of Frog Tape, I didn't think it was worth ignoring her stock of painter's tape just for my petty prejudices. I really didn't think it'd make a difference--tape is tape and she used the stuff all the time when she painted, so maybe I was just being biased.

NO. I was not being biased.

I used Frog Tape on two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a hallway without much incident. There was some minor peeling in the bathroom, but that's a risk you take when you don't paint along the trim by hand. Frog Tape never did this though:

Even worse, it bled through along certain parts of the baseboard. I pressed down that tape hard so I wasn't a happy camper.

Where it didn't bleed, it did this:

That's not even the worst one... there was one under an outlet that was an inch and a half wide and almost an inch tall.

I was so mad at the painter's tape that I stuck the entire ball of it to the stepladder and used my poor abused fingertips (from that incessant peeling) to call Mr. Cheddar and vent.

I took about an hour to breathe (and watch some Community with my sister) before I picked up the paintbrush again.

This time I had company.

I did it the way I knew, in my heart, I should've done it from the get-go: by hand. It was killer on my back and even worse on my neck, and besides the spots where the tape let the color bleed, it looks pretty darn spectacular now.

There's another saving grace.

When my dad chose this color, I immediately told my mum we'd need to redo the trim and doors. I don't know if they were painted off-white or if they've faded over time, but they look very yellow now. I already bought a can of ultra-white trim and door paint, and that fun process is starting tomorrow!

I've had a lot of fun with this project, taking most of it in stride instead of freaking out at small setbacks, but this painter's tape debacle was too much for me. Still, I got over it pretty quickly and ended up feeling very proud at my manual trim touch-ups.

So let's end this post with a couple of fun pictures!

First, I upgraded to an actual mattress!

... Which means I share it with Lucy now! It's the old mattress from the bottom bunk of the bunk bed, and while it's uncomfortable for a whole host of other reasons, it's better than waking up with sore shoulders. And my puppy gets to be more comfortable so it's all good.

And this is my view as I type this post (it's actually 1:30AM but this won't post for another eight or so hours...). That's my brother's Vizio (he said we could use it while he's in Kuwait) and my old cable box from when I lived here. And that's Chandler Bing, because Nick at Nite decided to be awesome and air Friends reruns late at night.

I'll be back soon with better after pictures, hopefully with finished trim!

And this train isn't stopping anytime soon--it looks like I'll be undertaking an even MORE challenging project than this one early next week. Stay tuned!