Old House Fix-up #3: Small Bedroom Painted

The ceiling I painted with the last of the free deadbeat tenent semigloss white, closely matching the recycled paint I bought at Restore.

It felt like I’d never get the small middle bedroom spackled, sanded, cleaned and painted, victim as it was to hundreds of shelf holes (bloody Hot Wheels collection shelving).

Cover plate for ceiling fan connection.

While also suffering a hideous brown paint job on two walls, and turquoise on the other two walls.

The tired white ceiling paint did easily cover in one coat, with few runs, using free abandoned Sherwin-Williams latex paint.

Different story for the turquoise and especially the brown, 1-2 coats needed using Restore bought latex, same tone as the ceiling paint, or close enough.

After a lifetime of spackling, sanding, cleaning and prep work, for such a small room.

I start up high on the edges and corners, standing up on my exercise step stool (500 times!) and brushing my way down.

I use a fine old slant edge paintbrush I inherited from my dad. The old man knew quality.

Rollers are next, loading plenty of paint but moving the roller slowly enough to not sling drops to get a good thick coat, yet avoiding runs.

Between coats.

I go over the surface in different directions, looking back for runs and blending them in. I missed a few but mostly sanded them down between coats.

Goodbye to the turquoise, now covered by recycled metal switch plates scrounged from a local house rebuild’s discards. Until the back bedroom.

The remaining runs I’ll claim came from previous paint jobs. Brown and turquoise paint? In a house that gets next to no direct sunlight? And northern exposure?

Extention stick and Killz stain cover spray, for probable racoon urine stains on ceiling edge: and to cover child’s writing on the door.

You’d have to believe the child also chose the colors until you see the the main bedroom.

Goodbye to the brown. Until I paint the living room, always dark as a tomb.

As always for us eldsters with musculoskeletal decrepitude, the ceiling and closets were the strain. So I used an extension screwed into the roller handle.

This helped me to reach the ceiling and the top of the closet. And I took frequent breaks, while keeping as upright as possible under the circumstances. PT helps.

I taped plastic and old bed sheet to the door frame to mitigate the smell.

The leftover paint from a deadbeat tenet I used on the ceiling and it closely matched the paint I bought for the walls.

I kept this window box fan running to exhaust the fumes. It helped but made the rest of the house even colder.

I bought the two gallons of semigloss indoor/outdoor latex paint at nearby Restore, Jimmy Carter’s Habitat for Humanity outlet, for $22 each.

Both the Visions and the old paint were both good quality and covered about as well as the ugly, dark wall colors allowed.

I carefully cleaned with warm water and soap the good brush but discarded all the rollers, too hard to clean.

Still working on the closet here, the door trim and casing, and the window trim & casing. Near the end.

I wore a filter mask, old eyeglasses, old clothes or a hazmat suit- unzipped, sacrificial old sneakers, nitrile gloves, right arthritic wrist brace.

The smell and VOC content are not the worst but bad enough. It has dissipated now and I barely smell it until I return from outside.

Refitting the door following flooring installation will also help. I’ve already finished installing half the laminate flooring: see the next refurbishment post for pics, tools etc.

Unless noted, all images, text, video and audio by todgermanica.com.

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