Two Days of Paint

So, I had this crazy idea when we first started talking about Derek moving in here after the wedding - back many months ago - that when he did move in, we would paint the walls! And would you like to know what colour I thought would be best? White. Everyone must now be surprised. "White?" you say, "Why would you paint white walls....white?" There are two reasons for this. The first being, that if we were to paint the walls any colour other than white, we'd have to repaint it white when we move out - which we are hoping will be within a year or two. The second reason for painting our walls: the smoke marks on our ceiling, the various pin holes and stains scattering the walls, the children's pencil drawings in the walk-in... the list goes on. And so, yesterday, Derek and I bought a gallon of Benjamin Moore's Chinchilla White wall paint and a gallon of the same in ceiling paint.

And we got to work, removing everything from our bathroom. We spread out a drop cloth, got our roller, our pole, our paint tray, our paint can. We taped outlets, doors, trim, etc. I attached the roller to the pole, stuck it in the paint, started painting the ceiling... I even got two strokes done, when suddenly we heard a loud crack, and the roller was lying on the ground. Good thing we had a drop cloth!

Yup. Turned out that our pole didn't seem to be able to handle the weight of the roller. Guess that's what we get for buying the cheapest stuff at Canadian Tire. So, off Derek went to buy a new roller (and a new paint tray, because we discovered the one we had hardly worked, and a second roller, because I forgot that part earlier). While he was gone, I finished painting the ceiling, and started cutting in on the walls - he was gone for forever, I swear.

Here's a shot of me painting the ceiling without a pole. 

The bathtub, the toilet, and a friendly stool became great ladders.

We just about finished painting the room last night, but around 9:00 (I started moving things out around 4:00) I was so exhausted - and Derek left at 7:00 - that I decided to call it quits. Besides, all I had to do was touch up some of the corners and edges. Figured it would be easy enough to do the next morning. 

Though, having coke to drink really did help me keep going. Mmm. Coke.

So then, today I got up late bright and early (of course.....) and got to work on the bathroom. In about a half hour, I'd finished up the spots that needed fixing, and within another hour, the bathroom looked like normal again (except with much cleaner, fresher looking walls) and I'd even cleaned it! I also even put up the shower curtain rod all by myself, and I finally finished putting up the last square shelf (it had been simply sitting on top of one of the others for about half a year). All in all, an accomplished morning. 

But was it accomplished enough? Not for Chana, the DIY fiend! I also decided it was time to finish spray paint some of my projects! And why do one thing at a time, when you can do three? Unfortunately, I don't have a before picture for the large mirror that you'll see below, but here's item #1 and #2.

#1 is the brown stool, left here by my wonderful friend, Lana, and #2 is a lamp we picked up from MCC because our living room needed much help in that department when we moved in... 

Both were in sore need of some TLC.

I won't say much about the stool, because I plan on doing a much more in-depth post about that in the near future, but here's a picture of what my balcony looked like this afternoon.

The brown stool got a lovely coat of Rustoleum's flat black spray paint, while the lamp and the mirror (which is the flat white object on the left) got a fresh new look with Rustoleum's glossy white spray paint.  For anyone wondering what I did to keep the mirror from getting covered in paint, I simply taped down newspapers and voila! I also taped over the place where the lightbulb screws in on the lamp. Don't want to accidentally start another fire in the apartment! 

So that was my day today (and yesterday). And there will be much more painting in the days to come, including some paint that isn't white (or black!). Stay tuned for more deets!