A Brush with Mortal Frustration

Last night I put up a new Project Tracker (from Houseblogs.net) for my interior painting, showing 16% progress.

I spent three and a half hours this afternoon painting my 2nd floor hall with its ramifications, and tonight the progress tracker reads . . . 17%.

That's all.

That's all, because I'm counting progress by wall surface and coats of paint, and this afternoon I learned that despite all projections and plans, I shall have to lay down two coats, not one, of the base color for the faux finish I'm doing in my stairhall.

Blast.

Didn't need two coats on the foamcore board I experimented on! Why should I need two coats on perfectly good primed plaster?

But I do, and I'm stuck taking an additional day on the job.

What's even more frustrating, I'm having a devil of a time cutting in the wall color (Behr's "Windsor Moss") at the ceiling. Blame it on the waviness of an old house, put it down to the wonkiness of plaster repairs over the years, say it's my fault because my hand isn't as steady as it used to be, explain it by the high contrast between wall and ceiling colors, but I can not seem to maintain anything like a straight line.

It didn't help that in this afternoon's daylight I often couldn't tell where the intersection line was at all. Confirmed that when I returned home from a meeting this evening to see that along many stretches I was a good 1/16" short of the ceiling.

(Guess that's better than running the wall paint 1/16" over.)

Don't talk to me about tape. Given how wavy and nubbly the intersection between wall and ceiling is, stray dark green paint could end up anywhere.

The only thing that's keeping me from pitching the kind of fit that could end with me, the walls, the floors, the dog and any handy cat splattered with moss-green paint is the knowledge that the top coat of my faux finish will be based on the ceiling color. So the imperfections and wobbliness will blend out.

I hope.

Tomorrow I get to tackle cutting in at the walls adjacent to the high ceiling over the stairs, oh joy. Let's not even start thinking of the random effects I'm likely to perpetrate there.

One comfort I have: Last night in my sleep I was plagued by the thought that I might have wasted money by buying a whole gallon of the moss green. But now I know I shall need more than a quart. Way more.