Sunday, November 11, 2012

The Ceiling

Love/hate:  2 gallons is enough for a
huge mess.


Learning curves can be painful.  And embarrassing.  And time consuming.  Handy Andy, miss-I-can-do-anything, intended to spray-paint the vaulted ceilings.  A bit of a stitch in one shoulder convinced me that that rolling the ceilings would be very hard.  Spraying would be so much easier!



Several days of laying out the process in my head was useful.  Watching expert "how-to" videos on line was critical.  Gathering the right equipment was frustrating--especially when the extension pole the experts said was needed was not available to rent ($175 to buy for a one-time use).

Peak of the vault--hosed for a split second with paint




Being persistent equalled all the Things I get to do today.  With a 4-hour rental clock running, I was finally ready to take care of the ceilings.  A 30"wand on the end of my spray gun made it possible to reach the 12' peak.  Ready to go.  Pull the trigger for the first pass. SPLAT, SPLASH!  Paint showered all over me, the wall, a wedge of carpet that was exposed, the fireplace hearth, the dining table in the next room!  Not believing that the fine mist I had seen in the expert video was NOT coming out of my sprayer, I tried it again on a lower wall (preventing the drench of paint from overhead).  SPLAT, SPLASH!
Spray gun, wand and corrected nozzle attachment.
All paint splatters on the plastic were from the single squirt overhead!

Time to look at the end of the wand.  Here is where I crash straight into the sharp curve.  The wand is a tube for the paint but comes with no spray/mister tucked into the  nozzle head--I proved it to myself, twice!  So now's time to let the rental clock tick down as I clean the carpet of paint rain and finally put the "bit" from the spray gun on the end of the wand nozzle.

At the end of four hours filled with roller coaster emotions of disbelief, despair, elation and determination, the rental equipment went back.  The next morning a wiser Handy Andy put the paint roller on a very long pole, painted over the learning curve stripes, and made the ceiling look great.

Tomorrow:  The Walls

8 comments:

  1. I occasionally find learning to be a problem, nevermind the curve!

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  2. Andrea-I am so glad this kinda stuff happens to others too! That I am not alone on the slippery learning curves all by myself!! Not that I wish you ill while sitting here in Albany with a shingless roof while the rain pours onto a tar papered roof waiting for rain abatement. So much for the weather forescast of a couple of small localized showers not over Albany. Talk about run on sentences, but this whole experience doesn't want to end, but keeps running on and on and on. I should have known better not to listen!

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    1. A little paint rain for me is nothing to major wet. Dried today--maybe! I'm praying for sun for you.

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  3. OH MY! That might have been the end of my ceiling painting. You are so persistent!

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    1. Had house guests arriving the next evening. It would have been a VERY bad time to stop!

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  4. Oh, my!!! That is precisely why my new house does NOT have vaulted ceilings! Life is always an adventure, isn't it?

    Nancy

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    1. Well, all told it worked really well. Maybe I'll just move before it needs to be painted again. And, yes, of course, life is an adventure. That adventure is why we get out of bed every morning! Loving it all!

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