Gloss, Masking tape - how many doors ????

Well hubby is now the official "spindle painter" as I have admitted defeat and am refusing to do any more painting that involves spindles !

So as I had glossed the hall doors last week, i moved on to the landing.

The preparation takes sooooooo long I can understand on some level why the previous owners did not bother with masking tape as it is a time taking job BUT it is a must if you cannot paint edges without it.

First task was to wash all the paintwork down with sugar soap - there are 8 doors on the landing, 8 door frames (always good if those two numbers are the same!), 1 radiator, and a fair bit of skirting board.

I soon discovered my secret weapon when faced with a vast area to sugar soap.........ankle munchers. They are just the right height to wash skirting boards down and can do the bottom half of doors and frames meaning i drastically reduce the amount of bending! I did not set out with the intention of utilising child labour in this project but when Mummy wandered off upstairs armed with a bucket of water and a cloth they soon scuttled up after me and begged to help - who a i to stop them ?? !!

So all woodwork sugar soaped, then washed down with water i moved onto preparation job 2 - masking tape application. Mind numbingly boring work made much harder by the ankle munchers now being in bed so me having to be very quiet so as to not prevent them from going asleep. I had considered handing over the whole job to them after their impressive sugar soaping work but gloss paint and small people is not a good combination.

Finally all masking tape in place and hubby takes his place on top of very tall ladder to do his spindle painting and i set off on glossing. Very productive night with all skirting now painted, 2 doorframes and also all doors detailed bits that the roller cannot get to - not sure what they are called they must have a name ? !

So just need to roller the doors which takes 10 minutes a door, S has a few more spindles to do and then the coving - estimating 2 nights work to get all glossing completed. This sounds like we will have the glossing done in 2 days but we don't manage to do it every night ! On a good week it's 2 nights of painting a week -on a bad week (like when the spindles have scarred me emotionally and made me have palpitations when i walk past a paint brush) it can be none at all !

Then we can move onto the emulsioning - this is not exactly a doddle as there are some very high bits over the stairs but it will seem easy compared to the spindles - actually it will seem VERY easy to me as i am not doing the hight bits ! I only emulsion up to my level - i don't do ladders !

Starting to think about which room may be next on the agenda which is a good sign as before i could never envisage an end to the hall !