The Home Stretch

The past few days have been a furious effort to finish the nursery. Over the weekend the last of the wall paneling went up and painting could start. I had the grand idea of using a paint sprayer on the paneling to save time, well that plan went to hell in a hand basket quick. We coated the walls and floor with paper to prevent over spray from covering everything in a mist of white paint. I've never used a paint sprayer before but here are my tips:

1. If using inside of a finished space, cover everything you do not intend to paint that color,
2. Use a full face respirator mask, not a dust mask and safety glasses
3. Make sure the material you're painting/staining will absorb the paint or stain

If you follow these simple rules you'll have a better experience than I. As soon as I started spraying, I had a cloud of latex paint fill the room, my dust mask wasn't really designed for this and neither were my safety glasses, I was inhaling paint through my eyeballs and had a headache for the next two days. I soon realized that wood and MDO do not as readily absorb primer as quickly with the sprayer as when brushed on which made getting an even coat difficult with out putting on too much paint. I ended up have to brush around all of the paint I sprayed on, which kinda worked out since that's the most annoying part of painting, constantly going back and dipping the brush in the paint. Also, those clouds of paint will settle somewhere, usually the first surface it hits. I made out fairly well here except for an area on the floor where we didn't cover it with paper.

We went with bamboo for the floor, it's considered a "green" material and was relatively cheap compare to regular hardwood but I would not recommend the Morningstar product from Lumber Liquidators. It scratches and dings way to easily. Also, I'm not sure if it's true of all bamboo flooring, but nailing it was a pain in the ars. Standard floor nails would split the wood along the grain causing the tongue to ripple making locking in the next piece tightly difficult. Maybe staples would have been a better bet, I would have glued but I used an under layment to reduce the noise if there were uneven spot in the sub-floor.

After some touching up and filling in small gaps I think the room turned out nice. Still a few small details to knock out.