I spent a decent percentage of this weekend in exactly this position.
One project I’ve been putting off (and off and off) has been repainting the very chipped wood entryway to our house, partially because when I brought in a contractor to look at our floors he told me that they were so old and worn that they wouldn’t stand up to the kind of sanding you’d need to do to get a really fresh-looking paint job (that’s why we ended up replacing the floors in our living room entirely, leaving this spot in the entryway alone because it wasn’t in quiiite as bad shape)…and partially because I couldn’t figure out a multi-hour period during which I’d be able to prevent all the small creatures in our house from making adorable little permanent track-marks across the floors before they dried.
But then I realized: 1) I don’t really care if the entryway looks perfect; I’d just like it to look better, and 2) When it comes to small creatures and DIY projects, there really is no good time. So on Friday night we got our son into bed, made sure our dogs looked reasonably passed-out on the couch, and broke out the black gloss.
Here are a bunch of “before” shots – you can see here what I was talking about when I said that the wood isn’t in the best condition. While I would love to install, say, a black-and-white marble entryway…that kind of expense and time investment isn’t at the top of my priority list at the moment, and I figured just a simple repainting job would go a long way towards making the area feel cleaner and more finished. True, painted floors will basically always chip over time, but repainting every couple of years is a job I can handle.
Because a quick fix is really all I was looking for here, I kept it easy: I picked up some black gloss latex paint and a decent brush, and got going. Gloss paint isn’t particularly forgiving (matte hides imperfections better), but I like the idea of a glossy entryway, so there you go.
Did I sand? Tape off the sections I wasn’t painting? Pay any mind at all to the many, many painting tips that I have meticulously collected over the years?
Of course not! I did, however, show off my gymnastics moves.
(If you don’t know what that “parkour” thing I refer to in the video is, don’t worry: I don’t really know what it is either. But it involves jumping over things onto other things, and Kendrick seems to think it’s extremely cool.)
Now, the after:
Better, right? Not perfect, but perfect isn’t the point.
