the living room anyhow.  that was the project last sunday.  and, as i expected, even though it was just one+ wall, it was a bear.  we used a gray primer this time.  we were told to do that when we painted the bunk room red, that it would make the job so much easier and take less coats overall and blah blah blah.  so we did it this time.  let me tell you… primer rocks.  if we could have just tinted the primer to the “red red wine” color we had selected, we would have been golden.  it’s thick and covered the wall perfectly in one coat. 

however, as a base that is supposed to be the miracle for painting red… pure and utter crap.  waste of time and money.  when we painted the bunk room, we put four coats on.  it’s still a bit streaky (don’t look!) and a fifth coat would have probably made it perfect, but we ran out of paint.  the living room also took four coats.  of the red.  over the gray primer.  that’s five coats total!  so how the heck did it save us anything?  really, it was more time and effort because i had to clean up the brushes and rollers and such between colors.  and that primer was a pain in the rear to clean out of the roller.  for some reason, it kept sudsing up.  what’s up with that?!

my wonderfully fabulous hubby took pity on my tired arms and shoulders (or was trying to stay out of trouble after criticising my painting – me being the one who has always done all of the painting) and did the last three coats himself.  it looked great.  until i started taking the tape off.  i have painted a lot of walls/rooms.  i always use tape because i don’t have a steady hand at all.  after all that work to have beautifully red red wine walls, the #$(&%! tape took the existing paint right off the walls.  and pulled up the new paint in several places.  i ended up using a razor to cut the edges so that the new paint wouldn’t get too torn up but there was nothing i could do about the old paint.  it looks awful.  i was ticked.  still am.  the tape is a 14 day painter’s tape (we had it on there for all of eight or nine hours) but i’m pretty sure it was a different brand from what i usually use (scotch instead of duck).  you’ll recall the fiasco i went through saturday trying to find my tape and having to go to the store to get more.  unfortunately, the store i went to only carried scotch.  i will not be buying scotch again.  guess that means that i’m going to have to suck it up and paint the rest of the monstrous living room sooner rather than later.  ugh.  if you don’t look too closely at the corners with the missing paint, the project turned out beautifully. 

hubby was tempted to leave it as an alabama wall. 

roll tide!