Faux Painting...

I hate painting. I especially hate faux painting. When there is painting to be done, I have "a guy". In this part of the world, when you have "a guy", it is generally someone from south of the border with a limited grasp of English. This guy happens to be legal and speaks decent English, he just doesn't do faux painting. He needs to learn faux painting... seriously.

Shelly never has been happy with our kitchen. In the beginning, the kitchen was the standard beige that all new houses are painted. You know what I'm talking about. They hit the whole inside of the house with the spray gun when it is being built, and all of the walls and ceilings are the same beige color. Slowly, but surely, my "guy" is changing that for us. Each year, we have a little more done.

But, back to the kitchen. Several years ago, Shelly decided that the kitchen needed to be blue. We have white cabinets, neutral Corian counter tops, and a white tile backsplash with dark blue tiles inset into it, so blue theoretically was a good color (Sherwin Williams Cobalt Blue) with the ceilings painted the standard white. Well, after the work was done, it was decided (not by me) that there was too much blue. The plan was to repaint the part of the wall above the cabinets, part of the entry from the garage, and the backside of the bar to a more suitable color. You guessed it, we chose a cream color. Wheat Sheaf to be more exact. Since we had just returned from a vacation and had had several rooms painted while we were gone, the budget to hire the work done was shot. No problem, I can knock it out. Well, it's not hard, but time consuming. With such a dark blue and going to a light color, you have to prime it - 2 coats. Then you have to paint it - 2 coats. Starting to get the picture? I just paid to have the room painted, now I've painted the dang thing again - 4 times!!

Fast forward to this week. It has been decided (again, not by me) that the blue in the kitchen is still too much blue. Too dark to be exact. Shelly is taking a couple of weeks off before starting a new job, so she wanted to try faux painting the kitchen. Fine by me, just leave me out of it. I sponge painted the downstairs restroom a couple of years ago and swore off that crap for good. I think I did a decent job, but I hated the stress of making it look 'just right".

Well, last Friday morning, Shelly hit Sherwin Williams armed with a few pics on the digital camera of the kitchen and the remainder of the can of cobalt blue paint. They set her up with $80 worth of paint, glaze, buckets, tape, sponges, and assorted what-nots, and just enough encouragement to get started. Monday was the big day.

Shelly worked hard on that wall on Monday, but was a little unsure of the results she was getting. I got home, and thought sh..(darn), that's not the look we were going for. We talked about some other ways it might be done, and Shelly started on the other end of the wall today trying a different method. Something about more glaze with less paint in the mixture, and a series of dry paint brushes to get a different look. Well, a long story shortened slightly, I picked up a fresh can of Cobalt Blue on the way home tonight and Shelly is downstairs now painting the wall back to the original blue color. I must say she is persistent. She plans to start the project over tomorrow. Tune in later to hear about the results. I sense that in the spirit of being a loving and supportive husband, I'm going to end up faux painting this weekend.

To Shelly's credit, this stuff is REALLY hard for those of us that are not artistically inclined. She is an Accountant, I'm an insurance guy - not exactly creative type careers. I tried a few things tonight with the paint, glaze, and sponges, and both looked like CRAP. That's all it took to make me fully appreciate her efforts the last couple of days. I should say that Matthew saw my effort, picked up a sponge, and actually did quite well - MUCH better than what I did. Maybe we should just get him to do it.

Dammit, Perfecto (my painter guy), you need to learn to faux paint...