Want a Peek? Counter tops painted! Painting on Wallpaper, Taping and Bedding Seams

Newly Painted Counter Top 

I honestly never thought about painting a counter top until Maria of Colour Me Happy said it could be done. Now I'm so glad!! I had some snafus with picking the color since there are only 16 colors to pick from for Rust-oleaum's Countertop Coating and the forest green Maria suggested was not available at Home Depot. They did have rosemary but it was brownish green, so they lightened it for me which gave us 'moss green'.

Now I'm worried. I don't think that is going to go with the Grass Cloth (Behr) color that we picked. I'm going to ask Maria what color I might could 'stir in' to perhaps move my grass cloth color over into the same tone as the moss green. I don't care about the shade, but I'm afraid this isn't going to match.

Old Bathroom Counter Top

Anyway, the bathroom looks so much better with that ugly two-tone counter of hunter green and purple gone. I could hardly sleep. I kept wanting to go look at the bathroom--one more time. :o)  Of course, I have two more coats to go (for both bathrooms!) I have to let them dry for 24 hours between coats and then let them cure for three days. Kids--don't wash your hands--don't forget--please!  (Good thing two of them aren't home!)

So, I want to paint my bathroom--easy right? Not in a mobile home sigh..First, there's these ugly tabs which they nail every four feet or more to cover the seams between the wall boards. Don't ask me why--I have no idea.  But if I want the walls to look like a normal home's walls, I have to do this...

1. Remove strips-easy.
2. Nail every single little tack and nail flush to the wall. (There are a lot!!)
3. Tape and bed the seams.Click here for a great how to article. (I'm running out of mud-drat! Another trip (30 min.) to Home Depot.)

4. Let mud dry, sand rough edges.
5. Cover with more mud, feather, let dry, sand.
Ok--Now you can paint. Um..How many seams is that? Well for just the bathroom- about eight. I don't even want to think about doing this for every room in the house!!

And then, we get to paint the wall paper. I always wondered why everyone on the internet said to use KILZ. Now I know...Let's see, I've got five gallons of free primer from my mom's home. Will it be enough to paint over two rooms with this weird print on it? It takes THREE layers of normal paint to hide these diamonds.  See how they show through at the top after one coat? Ah well! I may lose my mind, but my bathrooms and master bedroom will get painted if it kills me..which it might! Ha!

If I don't show up on the blog sometime in the next month or so--someone send out an ambulance to pick me up OK? I can hardly stand on my poor little feet after four hours of taping, bedding, and painting counter tops. You have to be EXTRA careful with that stuff--It's liquid plastic!  I've got a little cleaning up to do but this picture really doesn't show just how pretty the surface looks now.

And here's the biggest problem with painting on wallpaper--No texture! We have two huge buckets of mud leftover from building our office three years ago. My job, according to the paint expert at Home Depot, is to stir mud into the white base paint and use this special loopy roller to apply it. I'll paint the color over that after it dries. He even gave me a demo of the proper way to apply paint. Read more here.

• Don't press or push hard 
• Don't go up and down in vertical strips.
• Do paint in a large W pattern as wide as your arms will comfortably reach.
• Then without lifting the roller do another W going in the opposite direction.

 credit

 Sounds easy--but I don't know.  If I could just get the silly bucket of MUD open I could try it. I've been around the lid three times with whatever brute force I could muster and a flat head screw driver but can't get it to budge. My 15 year old is going to give it a shot. We hope to be painting together today. He's such a sweetie and said he'd be glad to help. Dear boy!

Well, I'm off to get some more mud..then I'll start taping so we can do the first white coat of primer. Hopefully I'll have the room painted by the end of the day.  I couldn't resist showing you a little sneak peek of my progress. When I can no longer stand, I'll take a break to drop by and see how your week is going too. Hope you are having as much fun as I am. :o)

Love ya!








Ps. Hi All, We did finally get the lid off and it turned out it wasn't mud at all but old exterior paint.

I found the bucket of mud in the workshop--eight pounds worth! No trip to Home Depot--Hurray! Between the two of us, Christian and I got it all stirred up. What a job! We had to use a crow bar!

I'm smoothing out the taped seams now and decided to skip the texturing with the funny looped roller sponge. It worked but then you should go back and knock off the points. That was way too much texturing work for me. I just wanted a little bit of texturing--not a lot. So I stirred in about two cups of mud into my primer paint and used a regular rolling sponge tube. It just a little bumpy all over (like normal paint but a little stiffer). Now it looks nice and uniform without being completely flat.

I'm getting a headache and took a break but that icecream that Gloria suggested sounds wonderful. Good thing we don't have any! I had some pineapple and pecans instead. Tee-hee!

Thanks so much for cheering me on. This is tedious work! Painting I don't mind--but this taping the seams is the pits. :o)sigh...