If you're still alive, it's a good day. When you've had one of those days and you're pulling out your hair, my dad used to ask me "is anyone dead?". If they're not, if you're ok and your family is ok, its not really a bad day. There are going to be days in your renovation when you want to pull your hair out. Take a deep breath and ask yourself "is anyone dead?". Ok, now put it in perspective. Things can be fixed.
Here's my bad day. I hired a friend to do the painting and he truly believed he could do it. However, paint is very different than stain and if you don't know what you're doing with a paint sprayer, things can go very bad very fast. By the time I brought in another painter, he shook his head at it and refused to touch it. The second painter agreed, but for $2500 to start, and up from there depending on how much time it would take. The third painter suggested I remove the trim and start again.
My brother, Mike, looked at it and shook his head. He's a bit of a perfectionist. Actually those of you who know him will shake your head at the "bit" part. He's a builder and a cabinet maker, so he knows what he's doing. He took on the challenge and went to work.
Here he is hard at work. Of course this was after a month, yes I said a month, of prep work. You see, although I'd always like to jump to the fun stuff, there is a price to be paid for skipping the prep work. When I came home the first time and saw the paint, I didn't get that "wow" feeling. So Mike went to work on the not-fun stuff. He sanded. And sanded. And then sanded some more. Just when I thought he was done sanding, you got it, more sanding. He filled the holes, he caulked, he sanded some more. We spent an entire night taping things off. Then we spent another whole night taking down cabinet doors, covering things with plastic and moving everything out. Oh, and then another night vacuuming.
Does all this sound tedious? Well then you know how I felt. I felt like "get on with it!!". I obviously do not have the patience to be a good painter. I can slap some paint on the walls, but I hate all the prep work. Mike is patient tho, and he kept reminding me that the majority of a good paint job is the prep.
The bookcase after weeks of sanding.
Finally after the vacuuming, he was ready to spray on the primer. Then after one more round of sanding, the final paint went on. It went on in four thin coats. He even took his time mixing it to just the right consistency. Apparently this also matters. It determines how durable your final paint job will be.
Here's Mike in his paint gear priming my new paneling.
So I guess what this amounts to is that you are going to have set backs in your remodeling. You're also going to have things that take longer and are more work than you expected, and many times you don't get to see a lot of forward progress for all the work. But that work is just what makes it all look so spectacular when it's done. You can take the easy way around, but you won't get the result you want.
Oh, and for all the trouble you have, you're also going to have those heroes that come through for you. And then there's that "wow" moment.
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