Painting News Now!

Posting and painting have been slower-going for me this year.  Here's a chance to make up some ground for both.

As mentioned in an earlier post, we've decided to paint the dining room grey.  Not just grey: Woodlawn Silver Brook.  Fancy!  The dining room has been primed and ready to go for some time, so now that we had the color picked out, the painting should go fast, right?  Oh, mice and men...

As some of you may know, for somethings in life, I tend to live by the adage: If it's not a right angle, it's a wrong angle.  And that goes doubly true for painting edging.  In the dining room, we have both crown moulding at the top of the wall and a chair rail on the lower half of the wall.  When we painted the green (family) room, I used an edger to get great straight green lines along the ceiling-wall edge.  It was a snap!  But then again, there was no crown moulding and chair rails.  Short story: I wouldn't be able to properly use the edger along the crown moulding and chair rail in the dining room.  I tried doing the edge work by hand using small brushes: wobbly lines.  Masking tape: the grey just bled underneath.  No good.  I gots to have the straight lines!

So, thanks to C's mom who told me about this technique using masking tape, we succeeded in getting razor-sharp straight lines and further enabling my specialized form of OCD.  And I now humbly submit for your consideration the méthode exceptionnelle:

Step 1: Paint the wall color (grey) down onto the chair rail (white), especially making sure to paint the wall color farther down than where you want it (in this case, onto the chair rail).  Let the paint dry:

Step 2: Mask off the grey paint to the edge where you want the wall-chair rail line:

Step 3: Paint a light coat of the wall color (grey) along the masked edge.  Don't worry if you get more wall color (grey) onto the chair rail (white).  The key here is to let the grey paint bleed under the tape (and onto the grey paint underneath) and in the process seal up any openings where paint could bleed through later.  Let the paint dry:

Step 4: Paint the chair rail color (white) along the masked edge as well as covering any wall color (grey) that has gotten onto the chair rail:

Paint as much chair rail color (white) as you need to make sure you cover up any wall color (grey) that may be on the chair rail.

Step 5: Remove the masking tape.  I didn't even wait for the chair rail paint (white ) to dry.  With the paint still being a little wet, the edge is even smoother:

(chair rail)

(Crown moulding)

I couldn't believe how amazingly straight the edges came out.  Unbelievable.  Once the edges were done, the rest of the walls took no time at all.  Here's the room almost finished (still need to finish the white under the chair rail):

Next: Living room!