13 Shades of Grey

Today I started The Great Clean-Up. Normally this is when I would wash and dust the walls and floor to keep loose dust from getting in the paint. Since I know I am going to be sanding in the living room again in short order, I decided to forgo the wall cleaning. I did vacuum part of the wall, where the worst of the dust was, but as you can see there is still a lot there. I'm going to be repainting this wall after I do the floor, so I'll be washing it eventually anyway.

 

I decided to do a sort of ombre effect on the stairs, which means each stair will be a different colour ranging from Black Suede at the bottom to Fresh Day (which doesn't look as much like a feminine hygiene product as you'd expect) at the top. This sounded like a really good idea until I realized that it meant maths.

 

 

I wasn't really sure how to figure out the mix for the paint. I got some paint mixing containers at Lowes, and after some advice from Science Doctor Dad, I decided to just break it down by ratio, using a unit size of 2 tablespoons, which made 2 units a quarter cup. Thanks to the local Goodwill, the measuring stuff was easy to come by. I set up a little station with all my cups and paints and wound up with 11 happy little buckets (and matching stir sticks!)

 

 

I started at the two ends, since the paint for these is coming right out of the can. It's a bit complicated, because I definitely need to add the gritty stuff here for traction on the stairs, but you're supposed to add it only to the top coat. I'm going to do two coats of the base colors, then add a teaspoon of grit to each cup and hopefully that will work out and no one will slide down the stairs. Here are the top and bottom stair:

 

 

 

All my pretty paint buckets are lined up in a row, ready to grey the stairs.

 

 

I'm slowly adding the grey, step by step. I have to do it in a way that allows me to walk over the steps that are drying, so its kinda higgelty-piggelty. The Supervisor is currently vacationing in the computer room, where he will no doubt tear up whatever he can find to show his displeasure.

 

 

 

So far there are only two consecutive steps to show the colour change, both at the very top. It looks like my mixing plan worked, hopefully it holds out. So far I like the way it is shaping up, I'll have a first coat on all of them by tomorrow, Supervisor and studies permitting.