The installfest I talked about in my last post certainly took up much of my day on Sunday, but Saturday and Monday of this past holiday weekend had MJ and I busy with a project at home: starting to paint our storage units. We purchased three storage units in the building a couple months ago, all of them are unfinished concrete and drywall which makes for quite a dusty environment so we’ve been working to coordinate getting painters in and handling other tasks to prepare them. We also had some professional painters come by for some estimates on painting in the condo itself, which we’re looking to get repainted in a couple months.
We had a painter scheduled to come in over the weekend, but they canceled on Friday. Oh no! Not impressed and unwilling to wait longer to get a painter scheduled since we’re paying for off-site storage until this is completed, we decided to do it ourselves. The last time (and first time) I had painted was back in 2004 at the house in Schwenksville, where I learned that it’s not nearly as fun as it looks on TV, but a passable job can be done if you have the proper tools. Luckily the fellow in the paint department of our local Lowe’s was extremely helpful, and when I pulled out my mini9 to show him some photos he recognised Ubuntu and we had a nice long chat about it! Excellent! Ubuntu aside, he got us on the right track paint and supply-wise and we were on our way.
Some photos of the walls in the larger units, concrete and drywall:
The first task (and the one which took about 16 hours over 2 days) was cleaning, taping and then putting on the priming coat. It all took considerably longer than anticipated, the first day was spent priming the walls of the larger units, and the second day was spent doing the small unit walls and floors, and the floors of the large units.
In the course of painting I also managed to stick my foot in a can of paint. I’m almost glad, we had quite a good laugh over that.
Did I mention that it was very difficult work too? The large storage units are not rectangular, so there are some tricky corners, plus some pipes that need to be painted around. It also turns out that concrete is more tricky to paint than drywall, and takes more coats of paint because it’s more absorbent and the surface is much rougher.
This Saturday we’ll be picking up where we left off and starting the formal painting of the walls in the larger units. I’m hoping it’ll go more quickly than this past weekend now that we have the process down and we won’t need to do so much cleaning and prep work.
Wow, a whole post about painting storage units. See, my life these days isn’t all about traveling and Ubuntu parties!
Thursday, Jun 3rd, 2010 at 21:27
You dipped your entire foot in a can of paint? LOL
Thursday, Jun 3rd, 2010 at 22:30
Yes, I know, I am awesome :)
Sunday, Jun 6th, 2010 at 10:42
We all know that :)