Saturday, January 2, 2016

Old house restoration: What I wanted vs what I got

The saga continues.

I decided that over the Christmas break I would paint the kitchen.  I have a full renovation planned, but I don't have the money for cabinets right now and can't see redoing the tile until I know for sure where the new cabinets are going to be, but I can paint most of it.

Behr color palette: Gobi Desert for the ceiling, Lunar Light for the walls, Moroccan Red for the door trim.  Maybe on the trim.  I have to put some up as a sample and take a look but I think it will look nice.

Step one: Paint the walls and ceiling.  Done.

Step two: Paint the door trim.

Well, there is some bubbling on the old paint.  Looks like the last painter laid it on too heavily and it clotted up, leaving thick bubbles around the casing fillet and crown.  I'll just scrape those out and put in a bit of primer before painting the trim.

Whoops.


It's peeling off in giant sheets.  Apparently they didn't prime or prep at all before they last painted this stuff (it was a rental for twenty years or so and I think they just sprayed the whole house in between renters).

Unfortunately this is going to leave a very uneven trim job if I don't clean it up a bit, so I guess I'll do a little more scraping.

Did I say little?


A half hour or so on this one door frame yielded this.  One door frame.  I have three more plus a window that I haven't touched.  I will probably sand, prime, and paint this door frame before starting the next one, just to have some sense of accomplishment.

Sigh.  There are days when I dream of a brand new house with everything built the way I want it, painted with the colors I want. I do love my house, though, otherwise I suppose I would have sold it and moved on.

It will look very nice when it is done.

I may be long dead by then.  Sometimes I wonder who will be in this house twenty or thirty years from now cursing as they try to fix the crazy amateur stuff that I am doing now.  Hopefully it won't be too bad.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heavy cigarette smoking indoors will coat surfaces with tar making paint not adhere well. That can result in the sheeting you are seeing.

heresolong said...

That is also a possibility. The house was a rental for at least thirty years before I bought it and I have no idea what was done.

I did notice that the bottom layer of paint, the layer that isn't flaking off, is a gloss paint that seems to be sticking to the original woodwork very well. I suspect that the gloss paint was not primed before it was covered although I don't know for sure whether stuff is less likely to stick to gloss or if that is just a cosmetic difference.