Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The Ongoing Foyer Project

I want to update you on my little foyer project.  But first - today is my Birthday!  42 years old!  Craig and I went out last night to celebrate (we have some kid events tonight so dinner was out of the question).



We had a great night - and it was nice to take a break from painting for a couple of hours.

I'm also excited to share that I've been featured this week!  I want to thank Laura from Along for the Ride and Jamie from DIY Home Sweet Home Project for featuring my $10 Homemade Headboard - 



And now the foyer...Well, I didn't get nearly as much done as I had planned.  I really gave it my all but I couldn't get all of the painting done.  :-(   So here's where I am now - 


We rented scaffolding, took the chandelier and a large wall mirror down, removed all of the wallpaper, and had the walls skim coated.  I described all of that in more detail here.  That left me with five days to prime and paint the walls and railing (I can reach all of the trim without the scaffolding so that took a backseat to the rest of the project.  Which was strange because I always paint the trim first.  But sometimes you gotta go with the flow...)  I primed the walls with Kilz latex primer -


 This is a good picture of my yellow-y beige trim.  I'm not a fan and plan on painting it white (one step at a time).  I was still afraid to get on the very top of the scaffolding, so I primed as much as I could reach and waited for Craig to help out after work.  I moved on to the first coat of paint - Valspar Cincinnatian Hotel Hannaford.  It was looking good - and getting late.  Although we completed priming, we still haven't finished that first coat of paint.  The next day, I turned my attention to the railing.  I primed the handrail with Sherwin Williams Adhesion Primer (tinted dark gray) -


I only primed the handrail because it had never been painted and was too smooth for the paint to stick.


Then it was time to paint it black.  I chose Sherwin Williams Enamel in low sheen black -


And here's the funny part.  I had never used enamel paint before so I read the directions to find out how long to wait between coats.  I was happy to find that I could apply the second coat four hours after the first.  Because I was sure I could knock out this railing in a few hours - and get the second coat on the same day.  Which would give me a couple days to finish the walls (around the kids busy schedules).  So, I put Barry Manilow on (yeah - I'm a huge Manilow fan) and started painting.  And painting.  And began realizing that there was no way I was going to knock this railing out in a day.  It was like painting the Great Wall of China.  It just went on and on. Swirl after swirl.


And after six and a half hours, I had the top railing completed -


Then I moved on to the LONGER railing...oh my.  I finally put my paint brush down after 12 hours - with much more work to do.  Four more hours worth of work to be accurate.  And the first coat is complete -



Do you notice anything missing?  Yeah - the scaffolding had to go back.  And I'm not finished.  Which was a problem - until Craig's friend reminded us that he owns scaffolding (he's in construction) and that we could borrow it anytime (after he yelled at us for not asking him in the first place).  I think the project is looking good so far - but it's been a very slow process.  I'm just going with the flow...