Painting

Mrs Vache Folle and I painted the downstairs bedroom yesterday. The room has lots of woodwork, sliding glass doors, a picture window, a closet, an alcove and a knotty pine ceiling with beams; so you can imagine how much masking tape we had to put up before we could get started. Taping is half the battle, we have learned. We had painted the room a kind of forest green over three years ago but this had faded to the color of unpainted drywall and made the room seem like a cave in winter. The relatively dark color meant we had to slap on a coat of primer. It then took two coats of the yellow Mrs VF had chosen (the same yellow everywhere else in the downstairs except for the bathroom). By the time we got to the end of the first coat, daylight was gone. It turned out OK, though, with only a couple of spots wanting touch ups.

These spots involve the trim areas, Mrs VF's specialty. My areas, where the roller is employed, are all perfect. As usual, the trim areas are the weak spot. I don't blame Mrs VF for this; nobody could be more careful at trimming. It's the useless devices that we have been using for trimming. They just seem to smear and glob paint or even to remove the paint already applied. There must be some kind of mini-roller that could be used to prevent these problems and make trimming go faster. I always finish my part, consisting in of 98% of the area to be painted before Mrs VF gets halfway through the trimming. I'm not saying she's dogging it or anything; nobody works harder at trimming than she. I'm saying that there has got to be some better trimming technology, and I refuse to paint again until we have found it.