Creating a Blank Canvas

Another busy weekend – I think I need a rest after that one. It was dominated this week by the office makeover.

As mentioned elsewhere, a leak in our fishtank prompted a complete re-decoration of my home office. The biggest task was moving everything out of the office and finding somewhere to store it whilst the work was done.We managed that between us and then I set to sanding, cleaning and finally painting. The sanding was the first job, followed by a good wash of the walls and woodwork and then the painting began. First a nice fresh coat of white on the ceiling, and then onto the walls.

Previously the walls had been a neutral shade of grey. I’d always liked that so had picked what looked like a very similar colour for the revamp. It was a B&Q paint called ‘Black Pepper’. It looked to be a very similar shade of grey, but with just a little more depth to the colours as it went on, first around the edges as I cut in and then as I finished off the walls with a roller. As it dried though it got progressively darker and darker until it was several shades of grey darker and nothing like the colour it said on the pot.

Drying Darker

Not to worry, there was nothing wrong with the colour, it was just a little darker than we had hoped, but some extra lighting in the room would solve that. Of course the fact that the paint was quite a bit darker than what was already on the walls meant that a second coat was needed to provide a good even coverage. So, at 4.30am on Sunday I was up using up the last of the first pot of paint to once again cut in around the edges. I then head off to Machynlleth for a run, a swim and then a bike ride before heading back home ready to do a second coat with the roller on the walls. I’d now finished off the first pot of paint so opened a new one and set to rolling the walls, before moving on to varnishing the wood work and glossing the windowsill.

I’d managed to finish it and all was looking good. However, as the paint dried it seemed as though the second pot of paint was drying much lighter than the first pot. In fact it was closer to the original and closer to the colour on the tin too. I hoped it was just due to the fact that the paint from the first tine had been drying for longer, but it’s now been 24 hours and all of the edges and other areas that were painted using the first pot are definitely a lot darker than they should have been and the main walls painted with the 2nd pot of paint are much lighter and closer to what we wanted. The result is a patchy finish with darker strips along all of the edges.

Two Tone Paint

We are going to have to take the pots back to B&Q to get a refund and worse still, redo the whole lot. I’m sure they’ll give us a refund and a new pot of paint, but that’s not really the point, I’ve spent a whole weekend doing this and it looks as though I’m going to have to do it all over again. All of this to provide a new ‘blank canvas’ for my fish tank!

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