A tale of two gallons

Before

The best part of painting a room is not the painting but the having painted--when the paint dries and the dropcloths disappear and I get to pull all that blue masking tape off the ceiling and baseboards to reveal a pristine new look.

For a while this week I wasn't sure I would ever get to that point. My first mistake, I think, was trusting the expertise of the woman behind the paint counter at Lowe's, but I wouldn't have made that mistake if I weren't a home improvement imbecile, and I certainly wouldn't have fallen backward off the step-stool right into the paint if I weren't a world-class klutz, so maybe my first mistake was simply being born. Nothing to be done about that at this point, tragically.

But I wanted to paint my daughter's old bedroom, which was last painted ten years ago when we first moved into the house. After living so long in parsonages where we couldn't paint without getting the colors approved by persnickety church trustees whose primary concern was "what if the next pastor doesn't like it?", we moved into a house where we had no one to please except ourselves. So we told our kids they could paint their rooms whatever color they wanted.

For my daughter, one color wouldn't do: she single-handedly created a color scheme that expressed her colorful personality. The upper half of the wall was white, the lower half sponge-painted a combination of bright red and yellow, and the two halves linked by a shiny black stripe running all around the room. One closet was painted red inside and the other yellow, and red curtains, black bedspread, and a glossy black dresser completed the look.

It worked for her but she doesn't live here any more and I wanted something a little more soothing for the guest room, but I was worried about what kind of paint would cover those very intense colors. So I approached the woman presiding in the paint department and asked her what kind of primer I ought to use to cover all that red and yellow and glossy black. That's where the trouble started. (Unless you think the trouble started at birth, in which case, again, nothing to be done.)

She told me I wouldn't need any primer at all if I bought this very expensive brand of paint, and in fact it's so good that one gallon would be enough to cover the entire room. "Are you sure?" I asked; "It's pretty dark." She looked at me with what I interpreted as contempt for my home-improvement imbecility but what was probably simple boredom, and she said, "No problem. One coat of this will cover everything."

Ha! And again I say, Ha! 

I had to leave the near-empty paint can up-ended over the roller pan to let every last drop drip out and still just barely made it all the way around the room, and then of course the colors underneath showed through clearly, especially the black stripe. After all that work, the room just looked dirty.

One coat: black stripe still clearly visible

So I called the manager of the paint department and complained. "Everyone knows you can't cover black with one coat," he said, but I pointed out that I didn't know that and neither, apparently, did the salesperson who pushed the very expensive paint on me. My ignorance didn't cost her a penny while hers had left me looking at an ugly room. Seeing my point, he invited me to come back for a second gallon of the very expensive paint at no charge. 

From that point everything would have gone very smoothly if it hadn't been for the falling-backward-into-the-paint incident, which slowed my progress considerably. This morning, though, I cleaned up the mess, pulled of the tape, and stood to admire my handiwork. The second coat did the trick: now all the walls are covered in a rich buttercream that will coordinate beautifully with the art I'll hang on the walls. One reminder of the former color scheme remains: open the closets and see intense red or brilliant yellow, a little unexpected touch of passion in the midst of a soothing room.

And as a result of my painting misadventures, I'm a little less ignorant about paints and primers and maybe less of a home improvement imbecile. Still a klutz, though. I wonder if Lowe's has anything to fix that?