Painting the Laundry Room for the 4th Time. Shoot me.

This Laundry Room is going to be the death of me.  For those of you that haven’t been following along, here’s what we’ve done so far:

Painted the walls

Bought new front loading washers and dryer

Hung some shelving

Installed cupboard hardware

Bath Crashers tore out the walls to wire electrical to the new bathroom

Bath Crashers installed a laundry shoot from the new bathroom

Patched and repainted the walls again

Hung the shelves again

Removed the laundry shoot Bath Crashers installed

Framed out the laundry shoot

Patched and repainted the walls again

Reinstalled the shelves again

Tore out the blue counter tops

Installed new wood counter tops over washer/dryer and cupboards.

Yep, all that work in one little 6’x7’ room.  And because nothing can ever be easy, when I took out the old blue counter top and put in the new one, it left a pretty big mess on the walls.  

 

Time to patch again.  I went back to my trusty, left over joint compound. 

I not only touched up the dings on the walls, but also took the opportunity to skim coat a few areas of the wall that had some bad paint-over-old-wallpaper-paste.  Skim-coating is basically spreading a thin coat of joint compound over a larger area to smooth it out.  As in the first few times I patched the walls, I waited for my joint compound to dry completely, sanded it down, and then applied another coat just to be 100% sure it was all smooth and even.  After the second sand down, it was ready to go.

And again, like before, I first applied primer to the patches before I painted.  If you skip this step, you will be able to see your patch even when painted over with the same color, as the texture of the wall will be different.

And in the interest of keeping it real with you all, here’s the disaster that was my laundry room during this process.  Because dirty laundry stops for no one, especially when you have a 3 year old boy in the house. 

Primer only takes a couple hours to dry, so I was back with a coat of paint in no time.  Which is unfortunately when I noticed this.

Yep, my wall, like my husbands sense of humor, must be a little warped, because right in the center of my counter, but not the sides, there was a gap between the counter top and the wall.  I lined counter with some fresh painters tape, and put down a bead of paintable latex caulk.  I picked up this handy little tool for applying caulk during one of our thousands of remodels.  Ithelps you get a nice clean 45 degree angle. 

By immediately removing the tape after smoothing down the caulk , you get a nice smooth line. 

I let it dry for a couple more hours, then laid down yet another line of tape to protect the counter, and applied what is hopefully the last bit of Rainwater by Martha Stewart paint that will ever be applied to these walls again.  Ever.  I’m serious.  Ev. Er.  If I have to paint or touch up these walls again, I’m moving.

 

We're almost done.  Just a few more fun projects left in this room to give it a little personality like a rug and some accessories. Of course I couldn't just buy a rug, and that project is taking forever, but I promise to show it to you all as soon as it is done.  What did you all do this weekend?  Any painting?