Painting's over! Thank goodness!

I was getting tired of 'camping'.

Since Jan 21st or so, we had a flurry of home improvements done in rapid succession. First the asbestos-laden popcorn ceiling had to be removed. We had to move everything out of the house into the garage for this. The air was tested & cleared on the 22nd, and we were back in the house the next day.

Then before painting, we thought we'd get the electrical updated. All new wiring all throughout the house (except the kitchen, which looks liked it was fairly recently updated). Dedicated circuits for the TV & computer; a separate circuit for each bedroom, outlets on every wall, a dedicated circuit for the compressor in the garage, and one outdoor outlet. We even had canned lights installed in our living room. All this was done to code, with the exception of not having the smoke alarms wired into the electrical system.

After the popcorn ceiling was removed, we had a really ugly, unfinished ceiling. My friend Derek recommended a drywall "Tape & Texture" guy - who turned out to be just awesome. He was very good at what he did, and I'm the first to admit I have neither the skill, nor the patience to develop the skill he has. He did a fantastic job on our ceilings, and patched all the holes the electricans put in the walls, then skim-coated the walls so that the wall would look more like one smooth piece instead of having a bunch of patches all over. He took care of a number of cracks, and taped all around our windows to prevent cracks from happening in the future.

At this point, we had plastic sheeting all over the floor, and drywall dust everywhere from the sanding we had to do before painting. We started painting on Wednesday Feb 6. Painting was such a pain - taping, cutting in, primering, 1st coat, 2nd coat. (in some cases, 3rd coat & 4th coat!) And picking colors is crazy - if we want beige - there's literally hundreds (if not thousands) variations on the color. Anyway - for the record, we liked the RL color palettes - ended up with RL Architectural Cream (UL55) in the living room - a light tan - which seems to look a little green with the contrast from the wood floors, RL Hazel Woods (UL50) in the back bedroom (a very nice soft green), and Benjamin Moore Horizon (a light gray) in the front bedroom.

Geez. We finally finished up around midnight on Sunday night, but we were pulling off tape & rolling up plastic sheeting until 4am. Last night we started moving some furniture back into place - and things are starting to look much better. We got our new mattress delivered today too. So all looks set for the houseguests arriving tomorrow, except we have to clean our kitchen & bathroom tonight.

Ralph Lauren Paint SUCKS!

After one coat of primer, and 3 (THREE) coats of paint on the ceiling with Ralph Lauren Designer Studio White, the ceiling looks like crap with roller marks all over the place. Ralph Lauren paints (made by ICI) is just junk - really thin paint, that dries patchy.

I should've done my research, but we were just sucked in by the slick marketing & the great color palettes. In retrospect, a simple search on "Ralph Lauren paint" shows over 1000 posts on bobvila.com most by people (like me) ready to throw $350+ worth of paint out the window!

Ugh. I'm really disappointed, Ralph - I thought you only put your name on quality stuff.

I think what just infuriates me to no end is the fact that we actually paid more for a lower quality product. That just makes me fume. It would be one thing if it were more expensive, but similar quality, but no, it's just a crap product.

Update: Saturday, 2/9.
We took the RL paint back to Grays Paints where we bought it - and they were good enough to exchange it for Benjamin Moore, although they had to do some visual adjustments after the computer tried to match the RL colors. So far, we've only painted a ceiling with the Benjamin Moore paint, but the difference in thickness/consistency & quality is already immediately evident.

Z back from the body shop!

I've been prepping my Z for sale. It's a 96 TTZ, with some amount of modifications - exhaust, intake, bigger turbos, etc. After a rather expensive repair to fix a low compression problem (turned out to be machine work that didn't quite seal the valves - John at Exact Motorsports had to hand-lap each one of the 24 valves to get them sealed), I finally got around to sorting out some of the cosmetic issues. As I never had an invisibra installed, the front end was pretty peppered with gravel. So I had it repainted. While it was in, I figured I'd also replace the window trim (was getting pretty faded, and replace the rear spoiler (which had cracked).

The front end repaint was no problem. The car looks great now! The window trim was no issue either. However the spoiler caused me no end of pain. First off, the spoiler is no longer available from Nissan - so I'm stuck looking for an aftermarket part. I called this after market Z parts company (who shall remain nameless), who sells a replica wing. This gets shipped, and supposedly fits fine initially, but once we get it painted, we discovered it isn't wide enough to cover the factory holes. So I call the Z parts company up, and they send me a wing from a salvage car in exchange for the nicely painted, slightly narrow rear wing. Bad idea. The salvage wing arrives, but the mount points are cracked.
Fortunately things are slow at the body shop, and they let me leave the car there while I search craigslist, ebay and twinturbo.net frantically for a rear wing. Finally I find one, and hurray, it's from a 96, and looks to be in pristine condition! So its shipped out, fits great, gets painted, and my car's back! :)

Now I just need to get a pre-purchase inspection & we'll be ready to get it listed. Not in bad shape for a 12 year old car - still turns heads - and with the big hp, it'll hold its own vs the new Z, or even the mighty GT-R! :)