Bor-ing

This is boring as hell.

I'm painting the staircase wall (and possibly -most likely- the rest of my main floor and ceiling) and it's dull as shit but this is what has been occupying my every free hour this week and last, and this is after all a journal of projects, so here you have it. 

It sort of all started with this leak. This came from my laundry room and is a story in itself (worthy of a separate post) because there is a lesson to be learned here.

We've been living with this eyesore since Christmas and I just couldn't take it anymore. Actually I just couldn't take how ratty the entire staircase wall looked. Btw, that smoke detector is also ugly A-S. I'm replacing it with a Nest, even though I half loath myself for caring about that. 

I began by removing all the damaged material. This repair terrified me as I was not one hundred percent sure I could re-mud this edge perfectly. 

I used good old fashioned drywall compound. I have all the tools I needed from when we repaired the drywall in the garage after the rat invasion of the early teens. My technique was to build and fill the ridge over multiple days, giving a thorough sanding in between. Boy does that make a mess. 

This is after four days of filling and sanding. Funnily I found that a Swiffer Sweeper, with sandpaper taped to it, worked great for sanding this big surface flat. After all this, I primed with Bulls Eye 1-2-3 and so far have two coats of paint (Aura Matte Simply White). I don't think I'm going to be able to get this thing to blend, hence the need to do the whole effing ceiling, all 1500 square feet of it, argh.

After I had mostly wrapped up the drywall repair, I set upon the stairs. Oliver and I have been discussing for some time that our entire main floor and stairwell (three stories) need paint. It is an enormous job -a lot of square feet in a large open space with high ass ceilings and treacherous staircases. It'd be really expensive to hire this out plus the inconvenience of having someone in the house. Plus, I'm super picky and secretly believe I can do a better job myself in the end. 

Sooooooo, I decided to forge ahead and knock out the small outer wall with the yellow door at the same time as the perimeter wall.

The tricky thing about my stairs is that I have no baseboard along the rise of the stairs. We did this on purpose for a cleaner look but I consider this in hindsight to be a design mistake. Having no baseboard makes them pretty fragile and vulnerable -because it is just painted drywall. I've had a problem with shrinking caulk and peeling paint from the water when mopping down the stairs.

Well let me tell you, I patched and sanded and primed and caulked and painted and painted and painted again. They are looking a lot better, I can't wait to take off the tape (one or two more coats on this wall first).

Up next will be this wall, the baddest of them all. It's really high and really damaged. I managed to prop my step ladder on the stairs on the flight to the bedroom floor but here it's neck-breakingly high, so this'll be a two man job. 

Cheers and happy painting if there is such a thing.