The Devil is in the Details

Another week has come and gone at Wallpaper Acres. This was the first of many weeks where it feels that at the end of the week, not much was accomplished but that is anything but the case! John has been a busy bee at getting the house ready to paint.

Two smaller things but both big in their own:

1. John got his stitches out and the doctor was very happy with how his chin healed up!

2. Our brush "wall" was picked up a week early and they picked up all the little twigs!

We purchased a paint sprayer for this project to help with the sheer amount of walls that needed attention. The sprayer we purchased is the Graco Magnum ProX17. A few main takeaways are:

• It is very different from prepping to roll vs prepping to spray - you have to tape everything! And that is not an over-exaggeration...when you paint the trim, you have to let that dry then cover that up to paint the wall color. The devil is in the details as you do not want to ruin the layer of paint you just put on the walls.

• Microfiber clothes and using the shop-vac are needed to clean the walls so there is no dust on the walls.

• The finish it leaves - with the sprayer, you are not going to have any brush strokes but there is a possibility for paint runs that you want to avoid.

On Monday we were able to paint the accent wall and beadboard ceiling in a dark grey Sherwin Williams color called Peppercorn. Man, does that wall and ceiling look excellent! We are very happy with how that project turned out and lends to the overall style we are looking to bring to this house.

John easily spent 40 hours getting the house ready for painting and primed all the upstairs walls. Each room needed some level of patchwork and caulking and both those items take time. Friday evening was the big day and we sprayed my office and our master bedroom. My office (formerly the Italy mural) had a lot of love given to it via John and received a decent amount of wall patches. We were nervous to see how the paint would look over the paint and if the patches would show through. When the first coat was applied, it did not appear to be taking to the patches well. This was also confirmed when we sprayed the master closet that also received some patching. Albeit, this was very disheartening and we were left very perplexed...did we waste our money with purchasing sprayer? Would it have been easier to just roll the walls? A million questions were running through our heads and we were very upset. We decided to call it a night.

When we returned to the house on Saturday morning to survey what the walls looked liked, we were happily surprised. Turns out, that the paint is absorbed differently by the patches and the wall. Thus, the patches were "flashing" a darker color while the paint on the non-patched areas was a lighter color. Given the proper drying time, the paint settled and dried all the same color. We were vey pleased to see that! There is a second coat needed and John will start that project tomorrow.

John and I took the weekend away and went camping with our pup Willow and it was a very relaxing 24 hours in nature....but very cold!!

We are excited to get can lighting in this week as one of the main things missing in this house is lights...hopefully, we will be able to accomplish this task prior to heading to MI to wish my Grandma a happy birthday!