Adventures in painting

'Twas the day after Christmas and I got all ambitious and set out to paint my dining room and kitchen.

The hardest part of the job (selecting the paint color) was behind me, 

and I was actually looking forward to this d-i-y adventure. 

It had been nine years since I'd last done any serious painting and 

clearly I had forgotten a) how much I hated painting b) how much I suck at painting.

I'm not really sure how this happened. One minute I was holding the small paint container in my hand, 

looking up to see if I had missed any spots. The next minute, the container was bouncing off the floor, 

making an impressive splash over a six-foot radius. I laughed to keep from crying,

took one picture, then spent the next half hour cleaning up my mess. 

Except for the fashionable racing stripe on my slipper, all traces of the spill were removed.

I cleared the dining room of all furniture to make the job easier.

Perhaps if I had left the table in place, I would have saved myself 

an assortment of facial bruises and several mild concussions.

My 5'3" self ran into the light fixture approximately 942 times before the job was done.

Reader Solveig tipped me off to these lazy girl's painting tips, which included a suggestion for 

using a 2" angled, short-handled brush for cutting in instead of taping off the ceiling and trim.

Note to 2" angled, short-handled brush manufacturers:
please call if you need someone to do an infomercial.

Lord have mercy, this thing is a miracle cure for notoriously bad painters like myself. I'm a believer.

I used Behr Premium Ultra, which is a paint and primer in one. Wow. 

Who knew this stuff even existed?  

Probably the same people who knew about cordless vacuum cleaners and never told me.

It covered the old color with ease and didn't stink up the house.

The color is Endive, from the Martha Stewart Living collection. I call it "barely green."

It clashes nicely with the green in my bedroom and the red faux leather on the half wall.

Can you visualize the decorating snowball rolling further down the hill?

My apprentice was in charge of positioning the drop cloth.

Smooch: I've got my doubts about this color.

Me: Me, too.

The good thing about the new color is that it provides the contrast I was looking for 

against the trim, cabinets and floor. The bad thing is, it's just kind of boring.

But I won't make any rash decisions about changing it until I get some new stuff up on the wall.

I had been meaning to update the photographs I had hanging there, 

then I saw some screaming deals on canvas prints, then I started playing around on the computer

with different images and arrangements and settled on this:

The real prints should arrive in a few days. 

Once they're up, I'll start agonizing over what to do about that red wall.

Then once that's fixed, I'll move on to picking a new color for the bedroom.

(This is how people who live in the middle of nowhere entertain themselves in winter.)