Saturday, August 20, 2011

When Disaster Strikes

Earlier in the week I had a very bad day. And I mean it was a VERY BAD day. I usually don't ever have bad days and I can let things slide pretty easily, but this was pretty rough. The worst part of it all was how absolutely trivial it was.

Glenn and I have been busily working away on many different projects in the house. Of course Glenn, being the logical one, would prefer to just tackle one project at a time. I have a really hard time doing that, especially when that project won't really yield any concrete results until a much later time. I decided that painting would be a good project for me to tackle since I do it all the time, I enjoy it, and I am pretty good at it. After wrestling with what seemed like a million different paint samples in the dining room, one stood out in particular. An extremely vibrant, deep fuchsia color was just begging to be used. I loved it, but not for the dining room. I was sure that Glenn would hate it, but surprisingly enough, he didn't! He actually suggested we use it in the dining room, but I just didn't like the way it was playing off of our dining room table. Besides, I was leaning more towards a dark blue/teal color.

Then I got this crazy idea that the fuchsia color would look A-M-A-Z-I-N-G in our downstairs bathroom when paired with lots of black and white. Since the bathroom is so small and the amount of exposed color would be at a relative minimum, I thought it would look awesome. Glenn pretty much agreed with me but just asked that we keep the rest of the elements less girly and frilly. I was A-OK with that. Our previous walls were a disgusting brown. I don't understand why someone would think it is okay to paint their bathroom brown or yellow. It just seems wrong. Since the walls were so dark and my new color choice was so vibrant, I knew I needed some primer. We had purchased a Groupon to local company Parker Paint so we went over there and grabbed some primer along with an impulse color choice for the dining room.

The next day I began working on the bathroom. I edged everything first which went pretty quickly, but things just didn't really seem right. Something seemed off. After I edged the room I went in with a roller and filled in the walls. It was really splotchy so I gave it another coat after it dried to even things up. Everything looked okay so I was ready to move on to painting once that was dry. I opened up my can of paint and freaked myself out a little because it was alarmingly vivid. I had never really seen a color with so much... life? I don't know, it was just weird and so beautiful at the same time. I was excited to start painting. I began the routine of edging and by the time I was finished, the part where I started was beginning to dry. Dark spots were starting to show up underneath it and I was not liking it. I started rolling my paint on and more dark spots started bleeding through. I was not happy with that but I figured that it was just my first coat so things would improve. I left it at that and the room looked like a murder scene pretty much. It was gruesome looking.

The next day I was excited to start again, certain that I would finish that day and that it was going to be beautiful. I noticed that my paint was starting to look funny. It seemed like it had thickened and then dripped downward creating interesting but frustrating chevron patterns on the wall. I tried not to let it discourage me and just told myself that I still had a couple coats to go, after all, this color truly is intense. The usual two coat was just not going to do it. As I painted on the paint started doing strange things. It started getting a weird "gummy" texture on the walls. After I would roll one section and then roll back and do some overlapping the roller would pick up the paint and not put it back down. It was like I was blotting at it with paper towels. It was so weird, I really don't know how else to describe it. That really began my bad day.

Writing this all out is very cathartic and embarrassing at the same time. As I gather my thoughts and detail out how things happened I can see how trivial and inconsequential this event really was. I'm not sure how I let it upset me so much, but the matter of the fact is that it did. I've concluded that not knowing the cause of the problems is what bothers me the most, but that still doesn't act as a reason for me literally throwing a tantrum in the house and breaking down into tears. I was such a mess.

I decided that a new coat of primer was going to fix everything and that I could just start over fresh from there. I was SO wrong. I thought maybe I just didn't use the first primer correctly, it wasn't a brand I have ever used before, so using a brand I have used on multiple occasions would surely solve all of my problems. I couldn't have been more wrong. The primer would barely stick to the walls. It almost instantly thickened up and began dripping down the walls despite me painting it on in a very thin, even layer. I was devastated at this point and absolutely convinced that I had ruined our walls. I only managed to get one wall done before throwing another fit and giving up. I should mention that the picture up at the top is actually the middle stage. It was the third coat of paint, right before I decided to cover it up with new primer. It's very hard to see in the picture but there are tons of dark streaks and splotches that weren't getting any better with each successive coat of paint.

I just could not understand how such a tiny room with such a limited amount of painting could be my undoing! I painted my craft room with general success (aside from a couple dogs creating a mini disaster for me to handle), I painted our living room with absolutely no problems, and I painted Glenn's office with ease. I couldn't figure it out. I still haven't really. My only conclusion is that due to the size of the bathroom and the fact that it gets used regularly might mean that the humidity is too high in there. I don't have any other explanation. We've been leaving the window open and the fan on to hopefully eliminate the moisture issue so I can attempt to fix the walls. Thankfully it has been pretty warm lately and dry as well.

Everyone keep your fingers crossed that the third time really is the charm.

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