It's Blue Da boo dee dah boo dah....

A new world... er... house record has been set! Last night I painted an entire room with 1/4 of a gallon of paint! Well, maybe it was closer to 1/3 - but it was definitely less than 1/2!

When I started painting, I had this feeling deep in my gut that I was probably going to run out of paint on the last wall. So I really tried to stretch what I had right from the start by just applying an ungodly amount of pressure to the roller. I cut-in using the gunky paint at the very bottom of the can and whatever I could scrape off the sides.

But despite my best efforts, on the 3rd wall, I really started getting low. At this point Mike got home and said, "I wish I had known! I would have told you to thin out the paint with a little water from the start!"

Now he tells me. So Mike took the littlest bit of paint I had left and added some water. I was amazed at how it brought it right back to life! And the coverage was nearly identical! Of course, even then, we ran out at the very last part of the very last wall. So Mike added more water. This second addition of water I would not recommend unless you're in a similarly desperate situation. Though it worked and we managed to cover the last part of the last wall - the paint was drippy and hard to handle.

But any mistakes made in this first base coat will be covered by my second sponged-on coat - so I wasn't really concerned with drip marks or other imperfections.

*IMPORTANT: If you're going to try this at home, make sure you have water based paint. You cannot add water to oil based paint... you know, that whole oil and water not mixing thing? If you have oil based paint, use mineral spirits.

By 9pm the room was blue!! And let me tell you (because I can't take pics cause I haven't found my camera battery charger yet) it looks awesome against the white door and window frames. I could not be happier.

Tonight's challenge is sponge paint! The trick to sponge painting... or so I would imagine because it worked so well the first time... is the paint to glaze ratio. Adding glaze to the paint adds to the time you have before the paint dries, so you can work with it for longer. Plus it thins the paint and helps blend it against the base coat.

The last time I sponged this room my friend Kie was with me and we got the mix dead on! Within just a few minutes, we became sponge pro's and the room came out... well, as good as wallpaper apparently.

I've got a lot to live up to this time around!

Here's a pic of how the room looked back on Sept 20th, 2005.