Thursday, February 19, 2009

Done with Painting?

I think we're almost hesitant to declare that we are done painting stuff in our house. We recently thought about it, and we have literally painted every square inch of this place. Actually the banister in this picture is perhaps the last bastion of the characteristic dark wood that used to permeate our home. No more!

These stairs were it. Although we'll be wiping down shiny white kickboards for the remainder of our ownership days here, they needed to be painted. Also, we had a little Satin Impervo leftover and really needed to use it. Finally, the appearance of these stairs were giving Erika flashbacks to the house in the Berkshires where she's been known to fall down a flight twice in a 2 day stretch.


It had been awhile since I'd worked with oil-based paint. I was sort of careful while painting - I mean, I used tape - but some paint did drip from time to time and I neglected to wipe it up. No worries, I figured, I can go back later and clean it with paint thinner. Did you know that paint thinner does a great job of cleaning up dried oil-based paint and floor finish too? It's true! So after trying to clean up one or two "errors" I realized my folly. We still haven't resolved this minor detail, and the end results really do look sharp.