DIY Project Diary  –  Week 10

Painting with the paint gun isn’t easy at all. I’d assumed it would be a time saver – but it isn’t. I bought an electric HVLP spray system – supposedly perfect for professional painting and lacquering because it creates an even, smooth finish – no brush strokes, no roller marks. However, the paint has to be thinned. A lot. Otherwise the nozzle gets blocked. This makes the paint so thin that you have to spray a surface many times. If you spray for too long the paint starts running down the wall..

Of course last week we had to have the hottest day of the year – it was 32 degrees. This didn’t help either as the paint dried too fast because it was mainly water. The wall became covered with dried marks of runny paint – not the sort of finish I’d imagined. I had to sand the surface down and do it again. Again and again. I spent days spraying the walls – 3 layers of undercoat and least 10 layers of final coat, if not more. It’s a tedious job. And messy. Everything has to be masked or covered – I had to hide under a suit looking like an astronaut. The boxes couldn’t be sprayed because the spray-gun container has to be held upright. I had to do those with a roller. Actually, I asked a friend to help me out with those, as I was getting very frustrated with the project. He was painting them in the garden whilst I was spraying the walls upstairs in the heat.

So if you ever read about these spraying systems saving time – don’t believe it.  They don’t save time – they take longer. They are expensive. Also, they need to be cleaned immediately after use which is tedious. Just like cleaning a cappuccino machine – actually much worse, because by the time you finish, the paint dries to the walls of the container… this needs scrubbing. The nozzle bits also require a careful cleanout.  You can’t just put these into a plastic bag until manana (like you can with a brush or roller).
Talking of rollers.. I ended up using the spray-gun together with a roller  – it smoothened out the runny-effect.

Having finished with the walls and the boxes, we painted the windows and doors then I lime-washed the roll-out storage drawers – these we made of timber slats and attached panelling to their front. When pushed back, they’re flush with the side storage boxes and with each other in the middle.

We’re still not sleeping in the room, but this weekend we can finally move-in! The mattress & the blind should arrive tomorrow and I’ll need to get some Hessian to create a radiator cover and cover the lids of the headboard boxes. Then at last we’ll be done in the bedroom.

The next project is the kitchen and living area. We want to open up the space on the first floor – no walls just a big living -dining-cooking space. It looks like we can’t do it because of fire regulations. I’ve got an appointment with someone at the council in the building regs department. I’ve done designs for several alternative layouts… let’s see what they say.