It's back: Painting boondoggle, Ithaca version!

I like to paint. At my California house, I'd painted every single interior and exterior surface at least once. Since I moved to Ithaca, my painting urge has been largely silenced by the fact that my house is painted fairly innocuous, tasteful shades of beige chosen by someone with better taste than me, and my experience painting the garage traumatized me. Nevertheless, I eventually started getting the urge. Innocuous beige is ok in most rooms, but I have different ideas for the bathrooms.
The downstairs bathroom is my first victim. Generic beige just didn't suit it. After somewhat less deliberation than usual (it's a lot easier to select a color for a room with no windows), I selected a mid-tone shade of plum and started painting.
After getting used to painting at my old house, it was a joy to paint the walls here. Even though I was doing semi-gloss in a dark color and didn't prime, it went on very smoothly and quickly and I probably could stop at one coat, if I were so inclined. Of course, I'm a little bit obsessive-compulsive, so I put on a second coat anyway. The bathroom is now the the same color as blueberry ice cream. It's a bit darker than I expected, but the room was cave-like even when it was beige. I may put a bigger light in over the mirror to brighten it up.
One reason I like to paint is that it requires just enough concentration to help me clear my mind of worries. I painted the exterior of my house after T broke up with me, and I found it very helpful. Unfortunately, as soon as I was done the layoff saga began. This time around, it was a distraction from brooding about cowdude and what to do there, but unfortunately it was a small job so it didn't give me enough of a break to be effective.

Painting Boondoggle, day 3: Reflections on my weekend fling

I had a weekend fling with my paint sprayer. We had a volatile yet satisfying relationship.  It got the job done but in the end it couldn't keep up with me and started leaking at inopportune moments and making weird noises.  I should've just rented a professional grade one for my fling.  Live and learn. It will still be useful for painting the fence.
Anyway, it behaved a lot better today.  It didn't clog once. I had only about 50 square feet left to spray and the valve started acting up.  I was able to finish that section and put an extra coat on the back of the garage. I would've liked to put two coats everywhere, but it didn't really need it and it was getting late.  So I acheived my goal of getting the walls painted this weekend.  I still have to do some sections under the eaves, but those are fairly easy.  I'll do them when I do the trim.
It was dark by the time I got the sprayer cleaned out and some of the masking removed.   Now I'm exhausted but still wired.  I'll take some pictures tomorrow now that the windows are unmasked.
I like the color. Somehow, it looks less green in bulk than it did in the small test sections.  In some lights it looks taupe or grey.  When I paint the trim, I'll see how I like it with just the primer. If it looks good I may use white for the trim instead of dark green.

Paint boondoggle, day 2: my tumultuous relationship with the paint sprayer

I had a hard time falling asleep last night.  My brain was going a mile a minute running through all the things I needed to do today, as well as fretting about the water heater.
This morning I continued masking and doing last minute stuff. So much for having it all ready to go.  My dad came over around 10:30, and we continued doing last minute stuff until noon.  Then I tried to run the paint sprayer.  I connected up all the hoses and set it to run water through to flush out the tubes. I plugged it in, turned it on, and nothing happened. The motor never came on.  I fiddled with it, and my dad fiddled with it, but there was a bad connection or faulty motor. So I took it back and exchanged it.  This required me to go to a Home Depot that was further away, since the one near me didn't have any more in stock.  I then had to wait in line behind a bunch of people returning small stuff like tape or caulk.
About 45 minutes later, I was home again with paint sprayer #2.  The motor worked on this one.  Unfortunately, it still didn't prime properly.  It didn't help matters that  the manual was probably the worst example of technical writing I've ever seen.  My dad and I messed with it for a while, and then finally I gave up and started painting under the eaves while he continued playing with it.  It has an adapter that lets you connect it to a garden hose. Apparently the slight pressure from the water in the hose was enough to unseize the valve, and then it started working.  It was probably 3 PM by the time I actually started spraying paint.  I got three walls of the house painted, and much of that time was spent on the paint sprayer learning curve. The actual painting took very little time.  I was very impressed and relieved that I was able to paint all the way to the top of the front of my house with only the 8-foot ladder rather than the extension ladder.  That was what I worried about more than any other aspect of the painting.
The paint sprayer will spray up to 1 quart per minute. That's a lot of paint.  In some areas I overdid it and laid down a pretty thick coat. I'll be more careful tomorrow. 
It looks pretty nice so far.  I am pleased with the color.  Tomorrow I'd like to finish up the exterior walls.  I think it's manageable provided that the paint sprayer doesn't act up to much...knock on wood!
Oh yeah, the water heater.  It just needed to be rebooted.  Unfortunately it doesn't like being partially covered either, so it turned itself off again after a while.  D'ohh!

Windows remodel=all done. Now it's my turn to work.

John finished up the windows last week.  A massive storm blew in and he had to switch into high gear to get everything zipped up in time.  Anyway, they look great and I am pleased with them.  I could've went with somewhat wider windows and it would've looked even better, but I'm happy nonetheless.
Now I need to paint the windowsills and wall, figure out a window treatment, and decide if I'm going to do something about the fireplace this year.  I'm going to see if I can hire Janet for an hour or two and pick her brain. Janet's the designer who did my kitchen and bath.  She is really great at coming up with creative, workable solutions very quickly where other people can't.
More urgent than the living room decoration is getting the house painted.  I'm doing it myself.  This is my big crazy project to take my mind of T.  Except I had already decided to do it before we broke up, and now I'm less in need of distractions.  If John had been a bit more speedy, it would've been a good distraction. I don't have a huge house, and the siding and paint are in good condition on the house, and so-so condition on the garage. 
This weekend I did prep work.  I really should've allotted two weekends for that.  I scraped and sanded and chopped back all my shrubs yesterday.  Today I did more cleanup around the perimeter, more sanding, and washed down the house and garage with my fancy new pressure washer.  If I had known how useful it would be, I would've bought one sooner.  As it was, I was going to borrow my dad's, but the hose adapter broke again and he couldn't find or jerry-rig a replacement.  Mine is a lot bigger and more powerful.
I was going to paint the windowsills tonight, but I'm exhausted.  They can wait until tomorrow.
My dad is going to help with some sanding and miscellaneous stuff this week.  My plan is to take Friday off to do all the last minute prep work, and then rent a paint sprayer for the weekend.  I am alternately excited and scared of the paint sprayer.  I'm excited because it will save me a lot of time and sounds damn fun, but I'm scared because I have heard some horror stories about it being a giant pain in the ass.  It's a much larger version of the bane of my existence, the spray station.  The spray station is the apparatus we use to spray slurries of catalyst onto ceramic rods prior to testing.  Same idea - a slurry gets sprayed.  Sometimes it works great, other times it's a pain in the ass when things get clogged.  My hope is that both the paint sprayer and the paint are more optimized for that specific purpose, as opposed to a first generation research instrument that sees a wide variety of materials.
I'm painting the house a light grayish green, with a darker green on the trim.  The windows themselves, gutters, and roof trim are white. If I have a last minute change of heart, I may paint all the trim white. I'm not planning on doing the trim next weekend, though.  I hate doing trim.. 
Stay tuned for the full paint sprayer report!