Something green

It has been way too long since I have accomplished anything house-wise. Yes, I am pleased to say, I am still offloading an item a day from my cluttered home. Except for travel days, I have been consistently identifying something (or more than one something) every day since January 1st. Funny how my house is still cluttered, but it is getting trickier to identify likely candidates to be evicted from the island. Still, it is high time I got back to home renovation. So, at the prospect of a three-day weekend, I decided it was time to get on with converting my unused home office into a library.

I have been planning to do this ever since I switched to a laptop and started doing any and all word processing in other locations. The office became a place to stack things or to occasionally print something. Winifred Gallagher's interesting book, "House Thinking: A Room-by-Room Look at How We Live" encouraged me to think about how I actually use space daily, and to consider my individual habits and needs. And what I need is more bookshelves and a cozy spot to read, rather than a dysfunctional office that doubles as a guest room for guests that almost never visit. Should someone visit, there is always the trailer. When I envisioned this project, the plan was to move the filing cabinet and all the computer peripherals into the closet (taking off the awkward sliding doors) and have nothing but shelves and chair in the room. Showing how a project can evolve, even before it gets off the ground, I have shifted to 2 large walls of bookshelves, and a small desk under the window on the 3rd wall to eventually house an iMac for photography work.

In keeping with my theme of "technicolor cottage", and particularly inspired by this image on a blog I follow, I decided to paint the room bright lime green with white and ocean blue trim. The choice of green might seem a bit overwhelming, but remember two walls will be covered by tall white bookcases and a third is mostly door and closet.
With this project I decided to experiment with the Behr Premium Plus paint and primer in one. I can report that, to my surprise, even the deep green covered well with just 2 coats. (The buglight yellow bedroom got 4 coats and still could have used another.) However, the white was a pain to work with since it was thicker than ordinary paint alone. And cutting in and rolling overly thick paint onto a ceiling was not a joyful job. I assumed the green was thinner due to the amount of added tint, but the deep blue trim paint was also very thick. Weighing the annoyance of the thick paint against the convenience of just 2 coats on deep colors, next time I'll use regular paint for the ceiling and the primer/paint combo just for the deep color areas.

In the future, I would also avoid painting when it is 95 degrees, 10% humidity, and there is no air conditioning. The paint kept drying on the brush faster than I could get it on the wall and the roller kept shifting in my sweaty hands. On the plus side, stray paint does not stick well to sweaty skin.

As always, I added a few coordinated wood-burned accessories. I'll post more pictures once I have acquired the shelves and set everything up. Incidentally, the white paint splotches on the hardwood floor date from well before I purchased the house - I may not be Michelangelo, but I do use a drop cloth when painting ceilings. I did, however, get the green paint on the outlet and plug. I was also working that weekend and needed to paint without unplugging the wireless router.