A terrible, terrible day

I got going with the painting today. I’d like to say that everything went smoothly and the results were perfect, but I can’t because the reality was absolutely the reverse.

Everything that could go wrong did and it all started when shortly after starting the jet of the high pressure spray gun got blocked. This presents a tricky problem with the machine being full of paint at 3500 psi that needs to be vented off.

The jet has to be removed and this allows paint to drain out of the delivery pipe. Pretty soon some found its way onto the floor. It took ages to clear the jet by which time there was a pool of paint on the floor as the pistol that I’d propped up vertically had decided to fall over.

Things went rapidly downhill from there because the jet kept blocking up every few minutes and while it was doing so the gun kept spraying unevenly which made it impossible to get an even finish over the surfaces being painted. Then the gun began to leak from the nozzle joint and I only realised it after I found that my hand was covered in paint and it was running down my arm. But even worse was to come.

I’d kept a bucket of water handy in order to try to flush the system out and it had already become more like very thin paint than water. One time when I’d been trying to clear the jet from yet another blockage I’d propped the gun up against it and while I wasn’t looking it was just heavy enough to knock the bucket over sending the water it contained all over the floor.

I can’t go on as it’s too painful to recount the sequence of disasters that just kept coming. I had to remove the masking from two doors that I’d painstakingly put in place in order to get at tools that I needed to dismantle the spray handset and to the sink in the kitchen to try to clean the jet and I know that with paint on the soles of my shoes I walked some into the rooms in question.

I ended up emptying two 12 litre cans of sealer-undercoat and although the ceilings had been covered, unevenly, there were still large patches of wall where coverage was too thin as a result of the jet beginning to block up while still spraying at reduced volume. And although the corridor walls had been sprayed, complete with the odd run when the jet suddenly cleared itself and started working properly, half of the walls in the living room still hadn’t been painted.

It was pushing dark by the time I’d finished as cleaning everything up, or trying to, was a complete nightmare. This included myself and I ended up having a shower outside under the hosepipe because of the amount of paint that I had to remove from my face, arms, legs and body. I dread seeing what state the living room is in tomorrow 🙁