So easy, even a cave man can do it. Painting has come a long, long way.
We waffled a long time about painting until we finally decided not to decide. I was watching one of the 500,000 home improvement shows on our idiotbox when I realized that what they were saying was true– paint is cheap. If you don’t like it, just paint over it…no great loss.
So we meandered on in to Home Depot to see what was available, assuring our boy that it was fun to pick out paint, and were immediately confronted with a 1/4 mile long wall of paint options–and we’d left the goldfish crackers in the car.
Shoved up next to the Ralph Lauren custom color display was a whole section on faux finishes. Apparently, paint can make a wall resemble just about anything. You’ve got denim, metal, stone, clouds, color washing, stamping, sponging, stippling, and many, many more. We decided on sponging; it looked like a big reward without much effort. Even so it was still more involved and expensive than I thought it should be.
First, you should wash the wall, spackle all of the holes, and mask it. Next, paint the first coat, wait 4 hours, and then put a second coat on. Wait 24 hours and only then can you begin sponging. As if I had time for that.
The little voice in my head asked, "what if we skip a few steps?" Rather than prepping the wall by the book, what if we just sponged some paint on it? A gallon of paint is only $15.00 – $25.00, what more can we lose?
The color that we REALLY liked was an orange glaze over a light yellow base, but the sample next to it was also very nice–orange over white. Coincidentally, our walls were already white, reinforcing my suspicion that we could do this cheaper and easier than the recommended method.
After asking the kindly paint counter attendant to mix us up a gallon of lovely tangerine glaze, we wandered off in search of sponges. They suggest that you use a natural sponge because of it’s irregularities, which produces a more natural, organic finish. We chose a couple of interesting sponges, a nice canvas tarp (since we’ll be doing a lot of painting and they last forever), and a couple of paint buckets with disposable liners. I love these little pails.
After making our choices, we threaded our way back to the paint counter to collect our paint, successfully avoiding the seduction of the lighting fixtures and expensive faucets. The nice young man had just finished mixing our glaze and he opened the can for us to inspect. OMG; it was one of the ugliest colors I’d ever seen! I had to shield my eyes!
Overcoming my many doubts–I made the wrong choice; he mixed it incorrectly; housing prices were sure to drop soon; I placed my trust in Ralph Lauren, smiled, and accepted the beast of a color.
Driving home, I reminded myself that at this point we were only out about $70.00 and we were sure to use everything but the hideous glaze on other projects, so all we really stood to loose was just under 30 bucks. By the time we got home, it was still early afternoon, so we decided to get out the glaze and sponges and dab a little bit on to see what it would look like.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about how it went.
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