holy crap...
just finished the first coat of final color on the "accent" wall in the living room. As earlier explained, three of the walls are good old government issue khaki, and the third wall is a true blue. The actual colors are called Canvas and, go figger, True Blue, both by Ralph Lauren. Yeah, I know, I thought the same thing the first time I saw the paint display for his stuff in the Big Orange Box in town, but when we remodeled the kitchen, which was instigated by purchasing some gorgeous depression glass knobs and handles on Ebay, we went bonkers trying to find just the right color green to accent them. The only paint we could find was RL, so I bit the bullet, shelled out a pile of money and bought a true depression glass green for the walls that have the white cabinets on them and a lighter shade of green for the other walls. The stuff covered and dried right back to the chip in one coat. Never had that happen before. I became an instant fan of his stuff right then and there. Unfortunately, when we decided to remodel the bathroom, I couldn't find the right color for the walls in the main room of the bath suite, we wanted a nice, rich Merlot color and only Behr made just the right color. Even with using their tinted primer over newly spackled and primed walls, it took three coats of finish paint and I'm still not happy with it. So, when we decided to redo the living room, we looked only at his paint and I'm so happy we found just what we were looking for. Two coats of the khaki and it's perfect. It's a dead flat finish, perfect for hiding my spackling transgressions and my imperfect corners. The first coat of blue is down over the deep tinted primer mixed just for that color and I can probably get away with just one coat, but I only used about a tenth of a gallon, so I'm going to hit it again tomorrow night, just for good measure. I'm very proud of the corners, where I cut in the dark blue against the khaki, I used a lining brush, which is shaped like a scimitar, they're used by the guys to do free-hand pin striping on cars. They cost a small fortune, but you can lay a 1/16" strip of the darker color on the light color wall with ease, as long as you run the brush with your whole body and not your wrist. That's a secret an old house painter taught me years ago - paint light first, then overpaint the light with the dark about 1/16" past the actual inside corner and from a foot away, no matter how bad the corner is, it will look straight and true. The corners are better than if I had used tape or a straight edge. On half a pot of coffee, too, no less.
Well, I'm beat plus. This is the first night in a week I'll be hitting the rack before twelve thirty, so I'm going to go catch up on some sleep.
I bid thee good eve, my fellow wanderers. Fare thee well.



wander with me...