One Sixty: A Sticky Situation

A Sticky Situation

Ok ok ok - so we all know that tape is important when you're painting. Especially if you're being artsy fartsy and creating shapes and color blocks and accent walls and ladeeda all over your house. For the past few months, I have been so angry at 3M and their Scotch brand blue painter's tape because it pulled off not only my 3 coats of primer, but also my drywall itself in places - leaving fuzzy brown marks where it should have been white.

When you've just finished building, insulating, drywalling, compounding, sanding, priming, taping, and painting - you're not exactly ready to say "oopsie doo, now I'm going to do it all over again because of a little brown fuzzy spot where the tape wripped off my wall."

So I just painted white over the brown... and you can't tell when you're a good distance away, but I was still kinda steemy about the whole affair.

And then I saw the new blue tape commercial.

And of course I was having not such a good day and so I leapt onto the 3M website and sent them a complaintative email. (Not something I normally do - you guys all know that I'm waaay too nice for that on a normal day.)

Well, would you believe I got a call from them yesterday? They asked me a few questions about my troubles and then asked me if I had more rooms to paint - I told them I still had the bedroom and hallway to do. And then they told me they'd be sending me a package of 3M products for my trouble to help me on my next projects! Wasn't that nice?

Blog Story

My now husband Mike and I purchased this quaint home back in spring of 2004 - our first home - and, being the handy folks we are, expected to have the entire thing renovated in about a year or so.

And here we still are... renovating away.

This house needed a complete overhaul. Its plaster walls were uninsulated, its attic floor covered in 2" of bat guano, its basement - dirt and snakes, its exterior - asbestos siding, and lead paint windows in every room. The electric had not been updated and light sockets hung bare from the ceiling. Plumbing featured cast iron radiators - and only one for the entire upstairs.

We began by gutting almost the entire house from top to bottom. (sans bathroom - we needed to pee) We rebuilt the entire upstairs, with a new floor (not new carpet or wood - the once unstable framing underneath) and turned 3 small rooms into two. We reinvented the downstairs by turning a closet into a hallway and eliminating interior exterior windows and doors from old half-assed additions.

New insulation, windows, electrical wiring (including phone and CAT-5 internet), plumbing and baseboards, and drywall were all added.

We purchased kitchen cabinets from a yard sale. (None existed previously.) Our families helped us replace and purchase new appliances including the once also missing washer & dryer.

Then we had the entire house lifted - straight into the air - dug out the dirt, and had a real basement foundation poured. We updated our oil tank and burner and created heating zones.

Outside, we took down trees and planted grass. We dug out an awkward hill to create a 2nd part to the driveway and used the rocks our house once sat on as a retaining wall. We electrified and repainted the garage.

And of course, we spent many an hour on finish work like paint, trim, closet doors, lighting fixtures, hardwood floors, curtain rods, dimmer switches, and many other things everyone else takes for granted. We are still working to complete all this final finishing, but happy to report that we are FINALLY nearing completion of all little things in all rooms!

In 2008 we began overhauling the exterior by creating a new french door entryway and building a farmer's porch and garage addition. We replaced our roof and then stripped off our siding and replaced with new clapboards. We then planted two new flowering trees and a maple in the front yard - our first major landscape purchases. I'm happy to report that here in 2011, the porch is nearing completion and the back yard is on the road to recovery with some new loam and grass. More plantings soon to come!

In 2012 we plan to attack the last MAJOR (emphasis on major) job in the house - the dreaded BATHROOM! We plan to first add a second bathroom in the basement. Then, demolish our current bathroom and rebuild it, adding a second bathroom on top for the upstairs.

And that pretty much brings you up to date. The battle continues day to day as we try and complete everything.

3 comments:

Pamela said...: Are they sending more of the same tape you're unhappy with, or something else...?

I used blue tape when painting a room or two and had no problems. Not sure if it was 3M or not, and did NOT have a fresh undercoat under the tape. How long did you leave the tape on before removing it?; 10:39 PM
Anonymous said...: I've had the same happen, but it was mostly where I'd gotten paint overlapping on the tape and as I pulled the tape off the paint pulled away too. To avoid this I've used a utility knife to cut the paint where the tape is first and then pull it off.

Sometimes I think it'd be easier if I didn't tape.; 11:53 AM
kitrainia said...: As to Zelda: I guess they're sending me a package of 3M products - tape may be included, but it could have been that I had a bad batch or something like that. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth though. If all else fails, I'll use the tape to wrap my Christmas presents this year.

The tape was on for about two weeks before I took it off - I know that's probably longer than recommended by the manufacturer, but I was working with a dark color that took coats and coats and coats and coats. The funny thing is, the tape I got for less that $2 at a local close out store, not a name brand, came off clean after the same amount of time, so that's what really ticked me off at the time.

As to anonymous: My final solution, which I've just discovered, is to use a heat gun on the tape first - just a couple quick passes to heat up and release the glue - and then pull it off. If you don't have a heat gun, I'm sure a hair dryer would work too.

But I'm with you - I wish I had a steady hand enough to work without.; 9:27 AM