So when we decided on painting the trim… we decided to have a feature colour. Red, it is. ‘Kimono Red’. Or simply ‘Kimono’ I think. And I wandered round slathering random bits of the trim in red and we decided that this bit, or that bit, that would be red and the rest of it white.
And there was this section that I thought I could get away without masking off (I sort of stand by that judgement) when it came to painting the white which is going over the old white trim.
However, it turns out it’s a complete frigging nightmare.
I spent an awfully long time very carefully edging it today, and it’s not nearly as neat as when I use the posh masking tape because I am simply not that good (nor that patient) with a brush. The other side of the stairs, that’s masked off:
Which is kinda easier, although there will undoubtably be horrors when I remove it, which’ll require me cleaning paint off the stairs.
Painting this is distressingly traumatic if I’m brutally honest. Largely because it turns out that the house is entirely made of small, unreachable corners, difficult junctions and impossible to reach awkwardly placed bits. I don’t think I’ve ever had to paint staircase spindles before and it turns out I’m really not a fan. Of course there’s the deep joy of multiple corners, which are never my favourite thing, in addition to which there’s the endless game of what order to paint things in. The one nice thing is that the new just-off-white paint (‘Piano Key’, apparently) does look way, way whiter than the yellowing old paint. And it does look like it’ll make quite a difference to the stairs.
It is funny though. One of the things that makes this house stand out from our last one as being ‘better quality*’ is the trim. Our last house had very little in the way of wood trim, and that which it did have was a whole bundle less complicated. This house, the wood trim is a real feature (lamb’s tongue trim around the door frames, no less)… and it is one of the things I normally like. But at the moment it’s driving me a little bit spare.
But in the end, we’re slowly getting there.
* It really is way better built than our last house. Waaaay better.
