Jarbidge to the Oregon Trail

The was a bit more of an ordeal than I bargained for. The gallon of paint I have been saving for this day was not enough to paint the room. I managed one full coat, but I could see I needed a second coat. The dilemma was getting a new can of paint to match the existing color and getting to the store to get the paint.

You see, I loaned my truck to my son in law on Saturday before I started painting. I told him he could return it on Sunday after church. By the time I realized I’d painted myself into a corner, it was late and I didn’t want to call Sam up and ask for my truck back. (They would have to load babies into the car & disrupt their routine.) Don was gone all day Saturday and by the time he got home, I didn’t want to go to the store: I only wanted a hot shower and to rest.

It’s hard work climbing up and down off of a stool to paint angled ceilings & then crawling on hands & knees to do the walls! Besides, I became so obsessed with the project that I forgot to eat and I was not really in any shape to go to the store. I needed to eat and drink plenty of water.

I know: no one else does that. Forget to eat? Get obsessed? That would be me.

What I did do was a little research. I figured I would not get a perfect match in color, but I could make up for it by sponge painting. And sponge painting would add an accent to the molding that I hadn’t considered earlier.

Enter another problem: Don was going to go back up into the woods today and I would not have a car until this afternoon.

I guessed that all I would get done would be the trim & molding.

But Don is a little obsessed with his projects, too, and he had a stamp auction on eBay this morning. Yes, you read that right: he’s a philatelist. I suppose a philatelist is obsessed by definition: you’d have to be obsessed to sit and wait for an auction to end to see if you won a group of South American stamps from a dealer in New Zealand.

While Don waited for his auction to end, I borrowed his rig and went to the paint store where I had them mix up a gallon of something that came really close to the original paint. The woman who mixed the paint gave me an odd look when I said I wasn’t worried if it matched exactly as I was going to sponge paint. I bought a nice sea sponge, too.

I also made my self eat breakfast and break for lunch.

While I worked, I worried that this was not going to work. It’s hard to tell where you’ve been and whether the paint is drying a different color while you’re working. Up and down on the stool again, and onto my hands & knees. It wasn’t as hard as working with the roller and by the time I was two-thirds of the way into it, I was feeling pretty good about it.

I let it dry for an hour before I decided if I liked it or not.

The photo doesn’t quite do it justice and I can see some flaws in my work.

This is a little closer to the true color combination, but still doesn’t quite capture it.

The last photo is the truest.

I’m happy with it.

Next step: cleaning the softwood floors. I saw a product at BiMart that I want to try. There are some stains on the fir flooring that I want to try to remove. But that’s for another weekend.