Vengeance of the Renovated: Battle for the Fortress of the Wall Lords

[roadrunnertwice]

Last time, on roadrunnertwice:

AND NOW, THE CONCLUSION.

Rope

Rope rope rope rope rope. The floor had gaps between boards, and I was going to jam rope into those cracks with a screwdriver. This plan was not complicated.

I got some help from Jessica and Sixton for this, although they came in before I figured out any of the secrets of doing the rope thing. Yes, that is correct: there are secrets to doing the rope thing.

Obvious Parts of Doing the Rope Thing

• You can unravel a thicker rope into a number of coherent strands, and pick a strand whose width matches the crack you're working on.
• No really, just stick the rope into the crack.

Secrets of Doing the Rope Thing

• Don't be afraid to cut the damn rope. The gaps are too variable, so you can't expect a single strand to last you the entire length of a crack. If it's the right width when you start, it'll be the wrong width for most of it. You'll use a lot of segments of three feet or so.
• Never go down to a single-twist strand. If it's not double-twisted, it'll blow apart into useless fluff. But! If you step on one end of a single-twist and keep twisting it harder, you can fold it in half and it will squirm into a new stable double-twisted cord on its own account. And that is how I learned how to make rope. (I had to make my own rope for a lot of the smaller cracks, because the smallest stable cords in my original rope were too thick.)
• The rope thing is actually kind of fun.

So that actually went totally according to plan. And it came out looking fucking great, too! It really finished off the look and feel of it; gave it this whole treehouse/pirate ship vibe.

And yes there are corks in the knotholes.

If I get ambitious in the future, I might consider pulling the ropes, coating them with wax, and laying them back in. But we'll see how they age after being walked on; they might be fine as is. Also, that might be inadvisable on account of being an incredible fire hazard.

Things I Learned About Painting

Oh yeah, maybe I should disseminate useful information instead of doing nothing but constantly bitch:

• Line the roller pan with a trash bag! One less thing to clean. I suggest using tape loops to attach it to the bed of the pan, though, because otherwise it bunches up a lot.
• The plastic drop sheets at the dollar store blow, and will definitely pop holes before you're done. That's bad, because it kind of defeats the purpose. The thick one I found left over in the basement from the house's last painting was much better. If your dad has some greenhouse plastic from four years ago hanging around, use that. (I realize that probably only applies to my family.)
• It'll take multiple coats pretty much no matter what, but if you have any sample paint of the same color left, you can use it as an undercoat. That's what I did with the trim.
• Never try to clean a roller cover. They do not get clean. Buy the cheap disposable ones. I learned this the hard way with a sample quart before bzedan clued me in.
• To clean brushes, you need one of those steel claw thing-jobs. Uh, I can't really describe it very well. You'll know what I'm talking about when you see it. I'm gonna get one of those instead of a hook when I achieve my dream of being an urban legend murderer who attacks teenagers in cars. "The Painter," they'll call me.
• You can use a piece of cardboard as sort of portable masking when you're painting along the bottom of a baseboard. It works surprisingly well!
• Frog Tape appears to actually work. Hat tip to Jessica for telling me about it. It's like eight bucks a roll, but it was worth it when I was doing the trim.
• Modern latex paint fumes are so much tamer than that tung oil shit it's not even funny. Hell, my pupils weren't even dilated! I was barely poisoned at all!
• This guy was pretty helpful, maybe read that before you go at it.

But that's getting ahead of myself. First, I had to choose colors.

King in my World of Revolting Pink

Miller sells sample quarts for $5, and it turns out you have to buy them. You have to buy lots of them. Because colors are like flesh-eating plants. They're all cute and harmless when they're only a few inches wide, and then once they have a whole wall to themselves they get hungry and mean, and you're like "oh god what have I done."

Like I said, I originally wanted orange because I was stupid, but my friends talked me down. Then a random home designer lurking at the paint store convinced me to consider a kind of light goldenrod, which I thought had promise, but after the floor turned out to be that really bright red-blond instead of the dark brown I originally thought it was, that stopped seeming like even a remotely good idea. So then I stared at color chips for a while and finally decided to buy my first sample quart, in this really light shade. Almost a white, or so I thought. White with a strong hint of orange/yellow to it, to keep a warm and bright feeling in the room. (The room has only the one window, so I was all about trying to maximize the effect of the natural light.)

Guess what, that color got wall-sized and turned pink.

OKAY, GREAT. After that little surprise, I could see the proverbial writing on the literal wall -- I was going to have to go through like twelve sample quarts before I'd be able to pick a non-white color that looked good covering the whole room. So I'd declare defeat and go with white. To get some color in the room, I could paint the baseboards and window trim something fun. I ended up actually liking this plan a lot, largely because the floor was so colorful -- I'd have neutral walls suitable for hanging art on, and color and warmth radiating up from below.

So then I picked a really lively green I liked for the trim, and the gal at the paint shop was like "Uh... you sure 'bout that?" Hmm. Maybe I should really get a sample quart first and paint it on some cardboard or something.

She was right, of course. It was awful.

I think maybe the problem was the amount of yellow in it interacting with the amount of yellow in the wood, but who the hell even knows. (Well, bzedan or jemale, probably.) Anyway, I threw myself on the mercy of the oldest looking guy at the shop, and he suggested this sage-ish color from the older color deck, on the merit of a lot of other people having gone for it. I got a sample quart, and... it worked!

Cool! Now to just get some white paint for the walls. Oh wait, there are like thirty shades of white. Well, whatever, they'd probably all work fine. I went with a gallon of one of the warmer looking ones.

First problem: I ran out of paint before I could finish the walls. Awesome.

Second problem: Guess what, the shade of white I chose got wall-sized and turned pink.

ARRRGGGGHHHHH.

I went back and got a gallon of a cold-ass motherfucking white.

Epilogue

But so guess what, it worked. The white had a bit of a blue-ish tinge, but it turned out that didn't make the room look institutional and grim. It actually made it look bright and kind of calming! And bzedan was right: the actual painting, once you stop fretting about the colors and just put stuff on the wall, was really pretty fun.

The sage-y green, true to form, looked pretty different once it was on the wood, but I liked it anyway. I can tell it's going to look dated in about five or ten years, but I doubt we'll still be tenants at that point, and whoever moves in can just re-paint it.

And then I moved all my furniture in, and now I'm living there, and it's fucking fantastic. There's shitloads of light in there, and I smile every time I look at the floor or take a deep breath unhindered by Mint Wall Anxiety.

In conclusion: fuck you, renovation, I win. Eventually.

By the way, I think I've answered the question of what the deal was with that awful paint that was in here before. I think the last people were just as terrible at guessing colors as I was, but they were insufficiently persistent. They gave up and went with a bad color instead of freaking out for a week and painting over it two more times. Wusses.

(They were just as bad as me at a lot of things, actually. The walls were pretty sloppy. It was very liberating to know that, no matter what I did, the room had already been pretty thoroughly fucked up, and my additional fuckups were probably just making it better anyway.)

Guarded by Monkeys

Oh yeah, I mentioned the light switch. Just how many kinds of light switch does one house need, anyway? Gaze upon them:

And guess which one was in my room.

The monkey cover kind of enraged me, at first. For one thing, it was just the absolute opposite of my style in all things, and it also amplified the horrid minty-ness of the room, but the best part was that it made the light switch defective. It's around the corner from the door, so when I enter the room, I reach around with my left hand, grasp for the lever, and flip it up. The monkey bulged way out from the wall right where my fingers land, and he actually made it really difficult to blindly find the edge of the switch! So every trip I made to the room started out with me being pointlessly frustrated by the light switch.

Obviously I was planning to throw it away. (Or give it to someone else, since everyone but me seemed to fucking love the little bastard.)

After I finished renovating, though, I reconsidered. I'd changed everything else about the room; why not let the monkey stick around? Maybe he'd appreciate the improvements, too. I found myself kind of sympathetic for all the time he'd had to spend in minty fresh purgatory. He was going to have to stay out of my way when it was time to turn the lights on, though.

So yeah, that stupid thing happened, and then peace reigned across the land.

Postscript

I dedicate this cavalcade of harebrained mission creep to the memory of bikke, who I like to think would have jumped in immediately with advice on how to stretch this out into June.

Comments

[jeshyr]

Here via metaquotes ... and a lot of your other posts. But WOW you made that room look so wonderful and I got lots of laughs out of your mistakes so I'm happy too. Also, no burglar would ever dare to invade a room guarded by monkeys :)

[roadrunnertwice]

YES, didn't it turn out good?! I am so happy with the results I could practically scream.

[kamonohashi]

I am glad you kept the monkey.

Also, two paint related things:

When my family moved into the current house, the family room was a very pale yellow-green tinged white. I hated it. My family hated it. But they didn't actually get around to painting it until a couple of years ago.

Never let a toddler choose the color for their room. I insisted on pink and refused any and all attempts by my parents to change the color to something other than care bear pink. And then my brother was born and I moved into a new room in the attic (rather more sensibly painted light blue) and poor Kit had a pink room until we moved into the current house when he was... oh, nine or ten years old.

Also, when you were looking at all the orange paint samples I figured you were just looking to recreate fishheads.gif or whatever it was on your walls.

[roadrunnertwice]

Haha, oh lord, Laura said the same thing! And here I'd totally forgotten about that background. If I had revived fishheads.gif on my walls, I guarantee I would not have had sex until I moved out. x_x

Toddler was a possibility too, with the green. It was definitely a kid's room.

[opoponax]

Truly an epic journey, one that I feel privileged to have read. They will sing songs of your tribulations and hard-won triumph for generations to come. (Seriously, that room looks amazing.)

Also, I swear my brother used to have the same monkey light switch cover! Or one very similar.

[roadrunnertwice]

"Children! Gather close and I will sing you the ballad of Nick's totally unnecessary self-inflicted annoyances." (But for real and in all honesty, I AM unbelievably proud of all this.)

...that monkey light cover is A Thing? Man! What?!

[erika]

I have no idea how I ended up at this saga, but it is the funniest thing I've read this year. MY HAT IS OFF TO YOU, SIR. YOU ARE AN INSPIRATION TO ANYONE WHO WOULD DO SOMETHING CRAZY LIKE THIS WHICH DEFINITELY INCLUDES ME.

[roadrunnertwice]

NOOOO, IT'S A TRAP

(Thanks for the kind words!)