ChrisBunting.com

If there’s one thing I really don’t like to do, it’s painting. Which is kind of surprising to me, because there’s really not a lot of thought or skill required, and I’ve done it many times in my life. As a matter of fact, when I was younger, my brother and I would help mom and dad with fixing up their rental houses by painting. Lots of painting. Now, though, my wife and I are homeowners, and there’s an endless list of projects that need to be done around the house, most of which require painting something.

The main project that we have been working on over the past year has been finishing our basement. We’re nearing the end of this massive undertaking, and the last thing left on the list is painting. Of course, my wife had to have all kinds of molding put up (I know, it really does look wonderful), and molding takes forever to paint. At least it does when I’m the one doing the painting. The rental houses that my parents fixed up didn’t have any special molding in them. Yeah, there was the base trim, and the trim around the doors (most of them ) but for the most part you could roll the entire house in no time flat. Even just adding crown molding increases the time it takes to finish painting a room by twofold. To top it off, I have no skill whatsoever at cutting-in, which means we have to tape first, then paint, then remove the tape, then let the paint dry, then tape again, then apply another coat, etc. And if you think that sounds bad, it actually gets worse. The color that my wife and I picked for the trim, molding, and doors in the basement is a deep red color. Oh boy. If you know anything about painting, and painting things red, you know that it can take several coats to get even coverage.

The first time we actually started using the red paint was when my parents were down helping out in the basement several months ago. My mom actually had me setting up doors for her on the one pair of sawhorses that I owned, and she was slapping the red on almost faster then I could swap the doors. From the start, though, we knew things weren’t looking good. Three coats later on each door, and it was clear that something was wrong with the red color or the paint that we had picked. It ended up taking seven coats for one of the doors to look finished. Since I hate painting (have I mentioned that?) I started to get a tad bit frustrated with the prospect of having to apply seven coats of paint to every door, and every piece of trim, and every piece of molding, and the bookcase, and the windows, etc. We even went out and bought some red-tinted Ralph Lauren primer to try and help even out the coats, but to no avail.

Recently, though, we did go out and buy some gray-tinted Sherwin-Williams primer (thanks to advice from the painter that Meg’s father uses) and some American Tradition paint that was tinted to match the Behr paint that we were originally using. Today, I started applying the primer to the crown molding in the basement. It goes on smoothly, and has a fairly dark gray appearance. I did do a little test painting on a spare piece of wood we had, applying a single coat of primer and then on one side, the Behr paint, and on the other, the American Tradition paint. I also applied a second coat of each red paint on half of each side for comparison. The American Tradition paint went on very smoothly, and almost had a perfectly even coverage after the first coat. After a second coat, it looked wonderful. The Behr paint was very streaky on the first coat (as it normally was), and even after the second coat there were still obvious spots of less coverage. The choice is obvious. It does make me wonder how much of a difference the primer made, but I’m feeling a lot better about only having to do three coats and knowing that everything will look great.

After the basement is finished, I only have to paint two more rooms in the house, and the front porch… Oh boy, I can’t wait!