Paint splatters

I kinda mentioned, in this post, about how I was engaging in my first truly personal home improvement project. Not like I haven't done stuff around the house before, but it hasn't really been my house before and I haven't done it all myself before, so it's been an important first. Hard to imaging, old as I am getting, that this is a first. Guess the opportunity hasn't really been there before, what with the renting and all. Doesn't really make sense to remodel someone else's place...

Anyway I can pretty much call the project done. Well, not exactly finished yet, what with the touch-ups and such, but pretty much done. The walls and ceiling are painted and look pretty good. The walls are a dark grey-blue colour and the ceiling white so some touch ups will be required. Finally broke down and used some masking tape when finishing the door frame (door into the house). I painted it white to match the side door leading out of the garage and really didn't want that splatter over the relatively dark wall. Plus cutting the side of the door frame is awkward.

So, what have I learned... First the ceiling hatch into the garage-attic needs to have some handles on it. Would be easier (read: safer) to handle if you didn't have to jam your hand around an edge to maneuver it. Second that primer is a beautiful thing, especially over drywall. The walls required 2 gallons (3.78*2 = 7.56 litres) of primer. That meant the 2 gallons of paint gave me two coats. Looks so much better with two coats, even though I used the cheap "contractor grade" paint. It's a garage after all, where my cars live, and I think they can live with cheap paint. They're going to spend most of their time in the dark so the sparkling warm depth of premium paint would be lost on them. Philistines.

Well, this will lead to the next great solo project for me - building a table/tool area for the garage. That may not be so solo as I'm going to hit up people for extra wood. If they've got some, I'll use what I can get my hands on. They may even help me cut it. The non-solo project will be the "raised patio" as I'm going to call it. Not a deck, but something made of masonry and precast concrete that will be where a deck would be. More on that some other time.

The Sparseness of Life

I really need to develop some more habits. Good ones. Like writing everyday. It's good for my typing skills and my sanity. Both very necessary to continue existence.

Lots of good stuff happening around the house - mainly that I'm doing work around the house. For the last few weeks I've been slowly painting my garage. I'm quite pleased to be doing it - a home improvement project that is entirely of my own doing. I scrounged up some paint from my parents to start (3 weeks ago?) and purchased some last weekend. So here's how it went:

Week 1 - start with the ceiling. A good recommendation from my dad and I would have felt pretty dumb if I started with the walls. The left-over paint consisted of a couple of partly-filled cans of "Fresh Start" primer. Good stuff - didn't splatter too much. Continued part of the ceiling every day after work for an hour or so.

Weekend 2 - Finish the ceiling and buy more paint. I was pretty sure that I was going to run out of primer, so off to the store. I did not realize that primer cost >$50 a gallon!! Yikes! Luckily, I didn't need to much of that primer as the ceiling was more than half done by that point. I got a liter of the good primer and a few gallons of "contractor-grade" primer and paint for the walls. Good to know that those people who painted my house used this lovely, crappy paint that is good enough only for my garage now. Lovely. Anyway, can't complain as it saved my half. On to the ceiling! Finished the ceiling and only needed a dribble of the new primer. Awesome - I know have a nice little can of primer, just in case. Saturday finish the priming. Sunday, finished the ceiling. Now I have a nice white ceiling. Plus primer first is good as the 2/3s of a gallon of ceiling paint I got covered everything nicely.

I still don't get those commercials advertising the colour-changing ceiling paint. First of all, you can see where the fresh paint is. Second of all, you need to systematically paint or you'll miss a spot. I'll grant that the colour-changing paint makes the process faster, but it isn't strictly necessary.

Weekend 2 (this weekend) - Start with the walls. Slapped primer up on Saturday. That well-cured drywall really sucks back the primer. Everything done but the corners and hard-to-reach places. Onwards to the present. Really, I'm painting right now. Painting and typing. Nothing like painting around the computer... Alright, I'll soon be painting. And it will be a good thing. Sorry I don't know a good Holmes on Homes catch phrase to supply for the end.

Power consumption

Slashdot has an article about the power consumption of household devices. They reference a blog entry by a Canadian Dennis Forbes who did some testing of his own home in Toronto. Very interesting as it refers to someone with a home and climate closer to what I experience, so it actually is quite relevant to me. Here is the Wall Street Journal article that kicked everything off.