How to Paint your Home Office

First and foremost, you need a three day weekend. Preferably one when it’s not necessarily nice outside and you’re not tempted to go do other fun things.

Here’s the schedule:

A few days in advance: look at 1,000 paint chips. Decide on a color or, if you’re feeling adventurous, two colors. Go to the store and buy your paint and if needed, primer. Buy all of your supplies if you don’t already have them. Supply list appears far below.

Friday night: Enlist a couple of skinny burly teenagers to move your office furniture out or to the center of the room. Remove everything else from the room and take everything off the walls. Patch any holes. Tape. Tape everything; edges of windows, doors, the baseboard, where the walls meet the ceiling, etc. Then call it a night. Tomorrow’s a big day.

Saturday: Prime. Not Rib. Paint the entire room with primer. My office was badly painted and possibly only painted once by the previous owners, who did not appear to use the room regularly. Drywall was exposed in places, so primer was needed. I spent the whole morning priming, then knocked off the afternoon to go to the girl’s basketball game and then to dinner with friends. It’s important to have breaks in your painting weekend so you don’t feel like you spent the whole weekend painting. My husband helped me out by doing the grocery shopping and making lunch. The girl kept the laundry moving. Thanks, guys!

Sunday: Now it’s time to launch the color. I decided to do two colors, a light antique shade of pink and a chocolate milk shade of brown. I did them on connecting walls, to make my life a little easier. It took most of the day. Fortunately the room has a wall with giant sliding doors, a wall with sliding glass doors to the porch outside, a wall with a door and a wall with a window. This reduces the “big wall” space, but not the time it takes to paint. I knocked off by 4pm to relax and recover. Thankfully my husband made dinner. Yay — jambalaya!

Monday: This is why it takes a three day weekend. On Monday, I did the two-color edges and all the touch-ups. Some areas needed a third coat. The third day also gave me time to remove all the tape and clean everything up. This day requires the most time, especially if you’re fussy like me. Cleanup alone took an hour so plan to start early so you can salvage some of the day to relax. You do NOT want to be messing with touchups and cleanup at 10pm if you have to go back to work the next day.

Supplies:

1. I like to use a combination of big rollers, small rollers, corner painters, edgers and a regular paintbrush. I like the Shur-Gard brand.
2. Painters’ tape. One roll oughta do it.
3. You’ll need a few dropcloths. Oh, you think you don’t, but you do. I prefer the cheap plastic type.
4. If you’re doing two colors, use two different paint trays. Just don’t get confused and dip into the wrong one.
5. Paint clothes. I have a pair of old jeans and a red hoodie I’ve worn for several winter painting projects. They have a bit of color from each on them. I have an old tee shirt and some cotton shorts I wear to paint in the summer. I’d rather die than be seen in these in public, although I have been known to run to Lowe’s in said attire. It seems somehow acceptable there. Also, no one stares when I have paint in my hair.
6. Tunes. I used my iPod Shuffle full of favorite tunes by which to paint. The best that came up was some Marvin Gaye and Cake. Good painting music.
7. Overturned milk crate. This is my preferred stand-on item. I don’t care if it gets paint on it, it’s stable, and just high enough so I can reach the ceiling. I’ve painted many a room standing on a milk crate. One tip: you must wear shoes.
8. Q-tips. These are great for those little bitty touch ups when the tape ends up removing some of the paint along with it.
9. Post-it Notes. This is my secret weapon. Stick these to the edge of a window or door when doing last minute touch ups and they work great as a guide and protector.

Things I learned while painting my home office:

Any home improvement project takes a minimum of three trips to Lowe’s. I always think I have everything, then decide I need more. In this case, I went back for more small rollers once, and again for an edger.

Painting a room makes you realize how much the people who were involved in the actual construction of your house really didn’t give a crap about the work they did. Nothing like painting a room to see how poorly mudded your walls were, or how corners were cut, shoddy materials used, and attention to detail ignored. It’s frustrating and makes me look forward to building a house again one day. I will be on those guys like a wet blanket.

I can’t seem to do a painting project without some minor injury. I broke two nails and jammed something up under my thumbnail. As I watched the blood bubble up under the nail I was less concerned about the pain than my memory of a previous similar injury. About seven years ago I bent to pick up a hard plastic Barbie brush of the girl’s and one of the bristles went up under my thumbnail. Days later the thumb throbbed and got hot. I ended up going to one of those urgent care joints for antibiotics and a tetanus shot (I believe it was a holiday). Anyway, I remembered that well with this injury, particularly when I then got paint under the nail. Ick.

Get done before you have to go back to work. Pay attention to how much time everything takes and amp up the schedule if needed. Your arms may feel like noodles and your shoulders may be prayin’ for mercy but get it done. Don’t leave any of the work hanging over your head when you have to return to your “real job.”

And now . . . the big reveal:

In this shot you can see the two-color connecting walls. When I told my sister “brown and pink” she said, “Like Baskin-Robbins!” Good thing we don’t have a B-R in Charlottesville or I’d want ice cream all the time.

This is another connecting corner. I chose these colors because I thought they’d change with the light in the room, the time of day, etc. They do!

This shot shows more of the brown, which looks sort of mauve in this light. The colors work pretty well together — not too different but different enough to give the room dimension.