California 2 Puerto Rico

Before my last trip to San Diego, I wanted to get the paint done in my office. Unfortunately I was rushed, didn’t read the faux painting instructions and it wasn’t turning out the way I wanted it. So I abandoned the project, until today. Here is the base coat + partial paint that didn’t turn out:

I’m doing a faux finish that requires a lighter tinted paint (the seafoam looking paint) as a base coat, with a paint/glaze mix for the finishing coat (the darker teal color).

On my 1st try, I was rolling the darker teal paint on and then trying to manipulate the paint with cheesecloth, for a weathered look. Unfortunately I was getting roller lines and I ran out of cheese cloth about 1/10th of the way through…

So, I resumed the project today with a new game plan. I mixed the glaze and paint (4 parts glaze to 1 part paint) and cut up a terrycloth towel and used that as my paint brush.

I scrunched the towel into a ball, dipped it into the glaze/paint mix and “washed” the walls in a circular motion. It really was just like washing/scrubbing a car, and I like how it turned out (for the most part).

Here is the finished faux finish:

Now I need to paint the white walls (they’ve been primed already), and I’m thinking of adding a pearlescent additive to the white paint to give it an interesting shine. I’m also going to paint the window panes white.

After the white paint, I need to pick out baseboards, outlet covers and hang all of the dohickies that go on the wall (which I need to get right the 1st time, since I’ll be drilling into concrete to hang anything in my office).

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What I haven’t been doing with my time is painting the sealer on the walls downstairs. Summer and I wanted to get the sealer on the walls downstairs this week so we could get rolling on decorating her office and getting the tv room downstairs ready for the couch (which arrived today).

I set up the brushes, paint tray, moved all the furniture to the center of my office and did a last minute read of the directions on the Water Tite Sealer Paint. The small print mentions that you need to spray a combination of water and muriatic acid on the walls and scrub off the white residue that is often left after concrete work. I don’t have everything I need so I think I am going to check the surf.

Scrubbing the acid on the wall is going to take some time…instead of just being careful with the paint, we are going to have to cover everything in plastic. Gotta make sure we’re good…..I’ll buy the supplies we need tomorrow.

The Surf

The surf has been good for the past two or three weeks now…work was really slowing down until Mike showed up. Now, under Mikes supervision, we’re moving again…although the posts are a little slow. I’ll try to be better with keeping you guys in the loop.

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Jerry and the twins have been working on plastering the downstairs walls and they are almost done! Here is a picture of Stefans office with one wall complete:

Unfortunately, the yard doesn’t look as nice…

It looks like the downstairs is going to be ready to rock by the time I get back down to Puerto Rico, so I’ve been trying to decide how I’m going to paint and decorate my office. I bought a book on painting and different techniques as I think I want to do a distressed finish on the walls…

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