Painting…still.

So yesterday was a pretty good day for me as far as painting the house goes.  It’s the last BIG room to get done and Sherry had to decide on what accent color she wanted and which wall to have as that accent wall.  She made her mind up the other day…I was glad.

So the rest of the room gets my favorite color…white!  Yes!  So I make my plan in my own mind and decided that yesterday was going to be “get the ceiling done” day.  In any room there is always more to the preparation than the actual work and the living room was no exception.  The two closets that are within the boundaries of this room were cleared of their junk and painted the day before.  Closets are always a “paint me good” pain in the butt for me.  I get paint on my back, my arms, hair….everywhere.  I will paint one of the small walls and then back into it painting another.  I hate closet painting, but it has to be done.

So now I start to prep the rest of the room for the big painting that is going to get done and it takes hours, literally, to get this done.  In fact I thought I had used up the last of the newspapers and was in a sort of a panic when Sherry suddenly unleashed a whole big old pile on me!  Again a happy guy, I proceeded to use that pile up.

For the fireplace I used a big piece of painters plastic I had, that saved several newspapers from having to be used.  I also had quite a time getting the masking tape to stick to the bricks.  The blue kind would not stick at all and the green magic kind they sold me in buying for about twice the price didn’t stick either.  Plain old white masking tape I bought at the dollar store was the winner!

You can tell I like to make sure the paint drippings are going to be caught by the paper and not end up on the carpet.

Well I got to thinking about newspapers in general.  We read the paper and then toss the whole thing into the garbage or into a recycle bin (that’s what we do).  When painting is coming up we save them for that purpose.  But what about the trend to go paperless?  Let’s talk about that for a minute.

What would I do without these newspapers?  I suppose I would buy up a big roll of painters plastic.  But that stuff is expensive.  Besides I am accustomed to using newspapers.  Someone needs to invent a replacement because newspapers will eventually fade out of vogue and quit being printed.

I’m thinking of an invention sort of like the old pull down blinds.  You fasten them up near the top of the window and pull it down and tape it at the bottom.  Then when finished they just roll back into the tube and are ready for next time.  Good idea huh?

With the ceiling painted my job was done…at least my goal was obtained for the day, but it was only 3:30…still lots of day left.  I went to making sure the carpet around the edges were masked really good for painting of the walls tomorrow.  When I got done with that task, I thought, “Heck, why not slap a coat of paint on right now?  It is going to take two coats to cover up that blue/mauve color anyway and that way I will be done tomorrow”.  So on went the paint.

I cleaned up the brush and the roller and sat back with a cold one to admire my work.  Sherry, in the meantime is in the kitchen gathering up tax stuff for the meeting with the tax lady on Thursday.  As I sat there enjoying number two drink, I thought, “I wonder if the paint on the walls is dry”?  I checked and sure enough it was!  Back downstairs and up with the brush and roller stuff.  On went coat number two!  NOW I’m done!

This morning it looks great!

Well, my use of old newspapers is just one way to use them as I found out.  I went searching for just how much paper is used each day/year in the USA for newspapers in order to get a prospective on how much paper is going to be saved once everyone is on the E-read band wagon, but I found this site instead…more interesting anyway.

http://www.wisebread.com/17-ways-to-use-old-newspaper

OK, enough screwing around, I have to go clean up some of that newspaper I spread around yesterday.

Bears Butt

Feb. 6, 2013