The Interior Painting Project Part 6

Finishing the living room ceiling

Today my younger son and I finished the living room ceiling by adding a second coat of paint.  As usual, my son did most of the work; but he briefly turned over the roller to me so that I could try my hand at painting an area of the ceiling that didn't get much direct light.

Our equipment consisted of a roller fastened to a four-foot pole, a 5 gallon bucket filled with about three inches of paint, and a roller screen.

(picture stolen from the excellent website www.paintingyourhouse.info)

He handed me the pole and I proceeded to make a succession of novice paint rolling errors:

Error 1:  I didn't load the roller with paint evenly. 

I had watched painting videos and knew to dip the roller into the paint at the bottom of the 5 gallon bucket and run the roller up and down the roller screen.  Despite my efforts, the side of the roller that got dipped remained soaked with paint; the other side remained relatively dry.  The result was that the roller laid down a corrugated pattern: heavy-light-heavy-light.  My son immediately spotted this error and showed me how to correctly use the roller screen.  With this error out of the way, I was ready to commit Error 2.

Error 2: I pressed the roller too hard on the ceiling. 

The result was that whenever I started a stroke, I squeezed out a drippy blob of paint.  My son told me to use a lighter touch when beginning.  So far, so good.  On to Error 3.

Error 3:  I didn't keep the roller perfectly horizontal on the ceiling. 

I tended to lean a bit to the right.  The result was that the roller stroke would be heavier on right and thinner on the left.  My son noticed that I was laying down a striped pattern and cautioned me to keep the roller level.

Error 4:  Instead of laying down parallel lines of paint with the roller, my lines tended to wiggle about. 

This error bothered my son the most, because I was corrupting the straight lines he had painted earlier.  He ended up spending more time fixing this error than I spent committing it.

Happily, when my son finally called it quits, the ceiling looked fine.  Here is a picture of the freshly painted ceiling.  We used a paint that is light purple when first applied and then dries to Ultra White.  A faint purple is still visible.

Tomorrow we start preparing the walls for painting.  Preparation involves cleaning, patching, texturing, and priming.