I love painting. Paint covers flaws and gives a room a fresh uplift and makes it clean and bright.
I've been painting walls for years, but never anything that tall. Tom and I learned a few things during those two days.
Don't Overestimate Your Ladder
Know the height of your ceilings so that you know exactly how tall you need. We way overestimated the height, and ended up renting almost twice as much ladder as we needed. You'd think that wouldn't be a big deal, but the taller the ladder, the heavier the ladder.
Yep - with just the two of us moving it, every time we had to move the ladder was a chore. Especially when I was cutting in around the windows. We had to be very careful not to lift the ladder too far back (that would knock down our ceiling fan) or lose control forward and crash through our high-mounted windows. Not to mention the fear every time Tom pulled the ladder back on his own and said, "I've got it." All I saw was the ladder leaning behind his head.
I actually did tell him, "If that thing falls on you because you wouldn't let me help, I'm not calling an ambulance. You can just lay there, and we'll watch TV around you." Silly man, trying to be all tough and macho.
It would have been funny to record us inching that ladder along the wall, Tom supporting it by leaning the bottom length agains his leg. Too bad we didn't have one more hand available to record our stupidity.
If we had known what we needed, we would have rented a smaller ladder that would have been easier to maneuver and less scary for the husband testosterone show.
"Professional" Rollers
While buying the paint, I thought, "This is a big job, so I should probably buy the 'professional' rollers to do it right." Well, that's fine, but I should have also read the package. Professional rollers come with professional instructions.
I was thoroughly confused when I rolled up the first bit of paint and found globs of something on my walls. I kept going, trying to figure out if the globs were dust that rolled into little balls, dried paint .... no idea what was making the mess.
Tom noticed that the roller looked like it was "shedding." I grabbed the package of rollers and then read that they needed to be rinsed in warm water and shaken out to remove excess fibers before painting. What? Why wouldn't they make them correctly before putting them in the bag?
Paint Poles Exist for a Reason
The great thing about posting your projects on social media, is that many times you have pros within your audience. Thankfully, a real painter saw what we were trying to do, and he offered to loan us some paint poles. Sadly, the suggestion came after we were too far into the project to change our strategy. We had been painting small areas high up (basically as far as I could reach before moving the ladder), without realizing that wasn't the most effective strategy.
What we should have done was complete the cutting in, then gone back and painted vertical areas so that the paint would lay on the walls consistently without blotchy areas. We made it work, but we'll definitely use the vertical paint pole strategy next time.