Doesn't it realize that I just want to make it pretty?! AUGH! I could rip my hair out.
Just to give you a little trip down memory lane, when we purchased the house it came with an 8x12 wall-o-mirrors. Yeah. I'm not kidding. The ENTIRE wall was mirrors. Crazy! I understand why someone installed them (it gave the illusion of a bigger room) but it just felt too "sharp" to me and so they were taken down (very begrudgingly by Garry and a few of his friends because Garry actually didn't mind the mirrors and knew it would be a pain to take them down).
Crazy wall-o-mirrors
We totally understood why the previous owner didn't take them down, these suckers were a pain. Thankfully, the guys did it while I was at work, or somewhere else other than home. I came home to this:
No more crazy mirrors!
This was all well and good, but do you notice the large patches of grey/green on the walls? Yep, that's where the adhesive stuck to the wall and pulled all of the layers of paint off. Crap. I was just hoping to take those mirrors off, do some quick repair and then paint and be done with it. But no... oooooh no...
At some point I decided that since the paint was peeling off it ALL needed to be scraped off otherwise it would look like crap. So the next 3 months we scraped and scraped and scraped the paint off.
But the walls were really gouged and looked even worse. Damn!
So then we got the great idea of plastering the walls ourselves. Not only was this incredibly messy, but we had no idea what we were doing. Seriously. It was a mistake.
We ended up making matters worse by mixing the plaster too thin so it was extra messy and extra difficult to put on. Great. Well, at least the wall didn't look as bad as it did. Unfortunately, the holes in the walls were still fairly noticeable, even after I spackled the crap out of them.
Okay FINE I said to the wall - and I bought some of the orange peel spray texture stuff. Thinking "this is going to be so easy and fast and the wall will look a billion times better." I even bought some silver metallic paint because it would be so awesome!
Because our patch job on the wall was dry, I went ahead and sanded it smooth. I vacuumed up the dust and grabbed the spray can heartily.
I shook the can just like it said on the container. I adjusted the nozzle so that it was spray a "medium" texture and started spraying.
Nothing.
So I shook it some more and sprayed again.
A dribble of goo came out onto the walls. I was a little worried.
So I shook the can a third time and really pressed down on the spray nozzle and finally in a quick spurt the texture sprayed on the walls with such a force it startled me.
I just realized how funny this story actually is if you're picturing it in your head as you're reading it. Seriously, I didn't mean for it to sound perverted. Or maybe my mind is just in the gutter. That's what lack of sleep will do to you I suppose.
It was globbed all over the walls and I was not happy. So I thought maybe I'll just wipe it down a bit and spray over it. Well, we tried that and it just kept coming out like big slimy globs all over the walls. I thought "maybe I should adjust the texture." Nope. Actually, the texture regulator came off and being the idiot that I am, continued on.
So now there's this texture stuff ALL over this one corner of the wall. Each can was supposed to be good for about 65 sq. ft. on the medium setting - nowhere close. I got one-fifth of our 8x12 wall "covered" and it looked terrible.
I probably did something completely wrong, but yeah, it was a pretty epic DIY fail.
I only made it worse by trying to wipe it off with paper towels (I honestly don't know why, I was just desperate at this point). So now the corner of our accent wall has streaky white texture crap on it.
I sent a text message to Garry to let him know that things had gone horribly awry and that I hope he wasn't mad at me. He called to find out what happened and as I fought back tears of my defeat by the hands of the accent wall (yet again) he just chuckled and said he'd bring home some wine for me. What a good husband I have.
As he walked in the door, he turned and looked at our accent wall. I was waiting for him to be horrified that I had messed up the wall as bad as I had and instead he started laughing... no... he cackled. Actually, I'm pretty sure he almost started crying because he was laughing so hard at me. :*(
While it didn't make me feel any "better," I was sure glad that he wasn't mad at me.
At this point, we're going to bite the bullet and just put paneling up (and paint it) because:
- I just want to get this project finished and this is a quick/easy way to do it.
- It will add some interesting texture to the room.
- I don't think my fragile ego can take another defeat from the accent wall.
There are a two choices I picked and sent to Garry to pick up later, one is a brick pattern and the other is white-washed cedar. I have no idea what's going to happen or what he'll come home with (probably the cedar since it's cheaper), but either way it will look better than it does now.
On a not-so-great-note, I've been exhausted all week. I'm not terribly sure why either. I've been trying to get plenty of sleep. However, last night I was up until 2 a.m. even though I tried to go to sleep at 10 p.m. This morning was not fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment