Fresh paint - again!
In case you wonder what I've been doing over the Easter holidays.
Apart from reading a formidable book by German author Joachim Meyerhoff, I've painted the front room.
The ceiling is Kreidezeit glue-bound distemper or Leimfarbe. It comes as a powder in a paper bag. All you need to do is add water, give it a good whisk and let it sit overnight. It is the paint of choice for ceilings and gypsum coving, as it can be washed off without damaging the plasterwork. And it is very cheap. I used Kreidezeit pigments to give it what turned out to be a very subtle shade of blue/green, a little lighter than planned, but still dark enough to set off the white of the coving nicely. Kreidezeit is another of those formidable manufacturers of environmentally-, building- and human- friendly products. Don't be put of by their rather basic English website.
The old paint on the coving was extremely flaky - totally the wrong paint on it, some kind of shiny emulsion. I tried to strip it off, but simply couldn't face it. The memory of stripping the coving in the lobby was still too painful. There aren't many things that I don't have patience for, but stripping coving (with intricate, rounded moulding, using a toothpick in places) is certainly one of them. So I simply scrubbed away the flaky bits with a washing up brush, using a spatula only where needed and then painted it thickly with Earthborn claypaint. Worked perfectly, the thick paint even covered up the cracks in the coving.
The walls are the same claypaint as we'd used on them before: Earthborn's straw colour. However, this batch was a little different to the first one we'd had six years ago. Less yellowy, more elegant yellow-brown-grey-ish.
Apart from reading a formidable book by German author Joachim Meyerhoff, I've painted the front room.
The ceiling is Kreidezeit glue-bound distemper or Leimfarbe. It comes as a powder in a paper bag. All you need to do is add water, give it a good whisk and let it sit overnight. It is the paint of choice for ceilings and gypsum coving, as it can be washed off without damaging the plasterwork. And it is very cheap. I used Kreidezeit pigments to give it what turned out to be a very subtle shade of blue/green, a little lighter than planned, but still dark enough to set off the white of the coving nicely. Kreidezeit is another of those formidable manufacturers of environmentally-, building- and human- friendly products. Don't be put of by their rather basic English website.
The old paint on the coving was extremely flaky - totally the wrong paint on it, some kind of shiny emulsion. I tried to strip it off, but simply couldn't face it. The memory of stripping the coving in the lobby was still too painful. There aren't many things that I don't have patience for, but stripping coving (with intricate, rounded moulding, using a toothpick in places) is certainly one of them. So I simply scrubbed away the flaky bits with a washing up brush, using a spatula only where needed and then painted it thickly with Earthborn claypaint. Worked perfectly, the thick paint even covered up the cracks in the coving.
The walls are the same claypaint as we'd used on them before: Earthborn's straw colour. However, this batch was a little different to the first one we'd had six years ago. Less yellowy, more elegant yellow-brown-grey-ish.
I've also hung the heavy mirror up properly - onto the picture rail, using brass-coloured curtain rings to make the setup a little more sturdy.
Now we've finally got our front room back!
