I’ve Got The Blues

Not emotionally, just in a painty way. A case of blue paint happies, if you want to classify the feelin’ I’m oozing after finishing my latest fixer-upper project.

We spent a lot of time working in the sunroom on our lappers over the weekend. It was rainy, and we had the still unscreened windows wide open to enjoy the breeze, and I stared at the ceiling a lot in thought, and it wasn’t before long that I decided I was ready to paint ceilings again. It had nothing to do with what I was working on, but seemed like a good distraction. It was so white in there.

Ceilings are kind of a paint-in-the-ass (pun intended, although only after it was an accidental typo). Aside from painting the sunroom floor (and then stenciling on scalloped polka dots), the room has been mostly untouched. It’s a storage area for old Bombay Company tables that never really were my taste, but were purchased inexpensively several years ago and I haven’t been able to sell (even dirt cheap) on Craigslist.

I had a bit of a bee situation last summer where the buggers were making a home in the open roof and birthing themselves into the sunroom through an existing hole in the ceiling (my guess is that there was a light or fan up there once upon a time). In any case, the bees had rendered the room buzzy, and obnoxious to use. I combatted the issue in a very I-don’t-actually-want-to-admit-I-have-a-problem kind of way opting to block their entry with a piece of tin foil. Really, I should have sprayed up in there or organized an exit strategy for the beasts, but I was being passive.

In any case, they didn’t return this year (maybe having new siding installed sealed up a few weak points in the exterior). Or maybe they marched in another direction because one of their buddies got wedged between the foil and the ceiling in a desperate attempt to break on through (to the other side). And for anyone else who has this song by The Doors in their head for the balance of the post… you’re welcome. Dead bug alert.

What I’m getting at, is that I decided that a flat blue paint would be a nice accent for the otherwise plain room. And come to find, I still had half a gallon of it left in the basement from when I painted the third bedroom a.k.a. my walk-in closet (which I recently pronounced as my soon-to-be my office).

The leftovers I’m referring to are Benjamin Moore’s Gossamer Blue, which is just a little darker than most blue ceilings I’ve gawked slack-jawed at. It’s also a little grayer too, which I like a lot. Enough to stand out and be noticeable, subtle enough to not compete with anything else in the space.

I cut into the top perimeter of the ceiling with an artists paintbrush rather than any painters brush that I had on hand; reason being: bead board. The stuff’s tricky, finicky, and needs a bit of TLC to make sure the paint gets in the nooks and crannies between each panel, so as you might imagine, prepping the edge took a few hours, but the first coat went on pretty effortlessly. At least on the flatter surfaces.

I used the same roller that I had bought and used when I painted the garage; a thicker nap, it is ideal for getting into the varied depths of materials like cinderblock and stucco, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to use it on the beadboard. It really did seem to help – more than any other roller would have, I’m sure, but I still knew that I’d need to do a second coat and hand paint a little more to make sure the paint was getting into each board crease properly.

Of course, at one point during the project I had to remove that horrid tin foil from the ceiling. Happy to report that the temporary seal wasn’t littered with dead bees… just a few came tumbling down. I was expecting the worst.

A second of paint coat was necessary, and the ceiling was looking much smoother and more consistently blue after it had dried.

Gray, or blue? Blue or gray? In different lights, it twists around on itself a little bit, probably mirroring the sky itself the same way the lake water does.

Time for other room accents. Like those curtains I was so excited about over the winter. Maybe real-not-garage sale furniture.

And a ceiling light to fix up that odd hole.