The Suburbiton Project: Day 712: Not another blog about paint .....

I thought there was nothing worse than picking tiles. I was wrong.

Paint comes in even more colours and then there is the decision of matt vs satin. BTW, to save you the reading, always go with the matt.

So the front room went from plaster pink to white .. very white .. blinding when the sun comes up in the morning white. And since we didn't put back up the curtains, sunglasses are definitely needed in the morning in our lounge.

So, for the walls I had the view of some nice neutral medium grey. Care thought we'd keep it all white. And we ended up finding every shade in between to help our discussion. Also, most people who've had the dreadful experience of painting will realise that even white isn't white - paint companies have even found a way to make that difficult. Dulux has from I could find about 15 shades of "white". So in came sample, after sample after sample. This and the fun experience of saying "hmm, that white isn't quite the white I had in mind". Argh!

So since life is full of compromises, so was our colour selection. We went with white cotton for the ceiling and polished pebble (Caitlin's choice) for the walls. It was lighter than I had in mind, but at least it wasn't white.

You'll see on the tin that the White Cotton was a silk finish. Some websites say that silk is better in a lounge as it's brighter and easier to clean. Yes, I know it's the ceiling but you don't know the capabilities of my kids to make a mess.

Anyway, I got the paint from homebase on a 3 for 2. Good thing as the silk looked horrible. Reflected the pendant light in some funny way and showed off every single imperfection in the ceiling.

Silk was replaced with a matt finish in the same colour. So the ceiling ended up getting 4 coats of paint in the end. Oh, how my neck really hurt after looking up for so long. At least I know we've got a good coverage.

I didn't want to make the same mistake on the walls. Instead of getting just the basic matt that doesn't clean all to well, we went with the Dulux EasyCare version. This is good for muddy, shaggy dogs and kids - apparently comparable in mess potential. After it's dry, the EasyCare is wipeable with a damp cloth without messing up the finish.

So on went on the final coats of paint. Cutting in from the edges to make sure the edges are crisp, and then roller painting the rest. I'm not sure why they don't recommend using masking tape to get a clean paint edge vs cutting in. But most YouTube clips recommend the former method. It's more time consuming and takes a bit of practice but works when you get the hang of it.