Molly and her Mom's week of home improvement adventures.
October 2008
“Oops” was heard a little too often!
Tips for using a paint sprayer:
• Read the directions first. Just jumping in and using it isn’t always the best idea.
• Make sure you keep the drain tube in the paint bucket. This is especially important when priming the painter. Better yet, put the entire sprayer into a bucket.
• A plastic sack from Wal-Mart doesn’t make a good painters cap, a paper bag from McDonald’s take out is much better
• Don’t spray too much paint on popcorn ceilings. They will soak up the paint and then peel off the ceiling.
• Thoroughly clean the spray painter before you return it to its owners, they don’t need to know about all the paint spills you had.
• A scouring pad works great at removing the paint off the spray painter before you return it.
• Paint boogers are what you get if you don’t wear your mask while using the spray painter.
• Wear Depends when you work, in case you start to laugh too hard after spilling paint all over the floor (or any other “oops” moment)
Be careful about what you say out loud. Telling a kid you are sitting on the toilet, while hanging a TP roller onto the wall, while the kid is holding the phone out, with your best friend waiting for you on the line is very embarrassing.
If you don’t want to cook dinner or clean the kitchen, keep the stove covered in plastic and just tell people who come by that you are working on painting the ceiling. This excuse is good for several days.
If you get too frustrated with a project, just go work in the bathroom with the Goo Gone, it will make you happy!
Carpet surfing with furniture sliders is fun, but you need to watch out for two things – the wall and accidentally doing the splits.
When hanging shower curtains, be careful not to step into the toilet when using it for a step stool.
White paint on toes makes for a nice camouflage if your socks have holes in the toes.
Keep Tylenol handy. Paint fumes give you headaches. Paint rollers make arms and shoulders tired and sore. Painting ceilings makes your neck hurt. Tripping over extension cords can injure any number of things. Moving bookcases bruises shins. And, finally, running into paint cans stubs your toes.
How to make and use your own popcorn ceiling:
1 bucket of spackle
1 can of spray foam
1 sheet of wax paper
1 food chopper
2 crazy sleep deprived ladies, high on Goo Gone
Lay out a sheet of wax paper. Spray foam onto the wax paper. Be careful not to get any on your fingers. Wash off the foam you got on your hand anyway.
Allow foam to dry. When dry, tear chunks of foam into small rice sized pieces. Do this for about 15 minutes. You now have enough foam chunks to cover three square inches of space.
To apply popcorn ceiling you can either:
Combine a hand full of spackle with the foam pieces. Mix it well with your fingers and then apply the foam infused spackle to the ceiling.
OR
Apply spackle to ceiling and then stick foam pieces to the wet spackle.
Use a putty scraper to “smooth” out the spackle.
Allow to dry.
Inspect area. Scrape it all off.
Call in a professional handyman.
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