apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I wish it WERE friday...

Just found info about a site where you can trade your airline points for other points or for stuff like Home Depot cards and also how to track your points all in one place (I haven't explored the site yet):

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/travel/track-your-miles-and-reward-points-in-one-place-211846.php

http://www.points.com

Mee too!

I've been bitten by The Cure bug and want to work on painting my living room...but, I've never attempted to paint in the cold, even indoors. I live in Minneapolis, so the snow is flying a bit today, it's going to stay that way for a number of months.

Any tips for painting my LR without getting high on the fumes and taking forever to get them out of my apartment?

There is no door to the room, only an openning in the wall, so is it worth putting up plastic to try and limit the amount of fumes in the rest of the apartment? Only the bathroom and bedroom have doors on the entry ways. At least I have good windows in the room (see link in name for floor plan of room).

Thanks!!

skywaykate, I just did it last Sunday, in fact have done it many times, and I have to say it's a terrible idea, but sometimes a person just has to have different paint color, even if it is 20 degrees out!

You will want to sleep somewhere else that night, so make plans with a friend. If you can't do that, then first thing, seal off your bedroom before you begin so that you will at least have a place to sleep that's not full of fumes. Tape around the doorway. Then don't go in there even once while you're painting.

Next you need a respirator mask with organic vapor cartridges.I'm talking a real respirator,not those charcoal filter masks. Make sure you get the right cartridges for it. The respirator and cartridges will probably add another $30 to the cost of the project but it is so completely worth it. You will be breathing completely clean air while you are working.

Then, all you can do is open the windows, crank up the heat and work as fast as you can, and leave the heat up for a few days afterward so the paint will offgas faster.There are "low odor" paints, and even Benjamin Moore makes one now, but the ones I've tried have been really sucky (Rodda, Safcoat, some other one I can't remember) and didn't seem very low odor anyway. Better to stick with quality paint and gut it out.

Apologies if this topic has come up on another thread, but did anyone else see in the latest O Home (er, it was a gift, really) that not ONE but TWO entries from last year's smallest/coolest were featured? Maxwell, why no nod to AT? I was bummed since clearly the editors didn't happen to stumble into these two places by coincidence. I was thrilled, however, to get the big, glossy photo spreads -- both places look fantastic.

For painting indoors, why not use low VOC paints instead of the usual? They've come a long way, baby. I am always kinda shocked that these don't get much airplay on the main NYC site (the pre-baby painting hustle was crying out for low-VOC paint). I'm a big fan of Rodda and Miller's versions, but I think you can buy the same thing in BM or Sherwin-Williams. The downside is that you almost always have to do two coats, the upsides are numerous: 1. good for you, 2. good for the atmosphere, 3. no stinky new paint smell. I go for the low VOC vs. the no VOC, so there is a tiny amount of smell while painting, but nothing like the regular kind, and it fades very quickly.

regards,
trillium

Definitely go low VOC if you can. We've used BM Eco Spec in our new home with success and even slept in the bedroom the same night we painted. Only wish we'd been around to be a part of the recarpeting effort in our building's stairway, weeks later it's still off-gassing some pretty noxious fumes.

Good luck.

Am I the only one who enjoys the smell of fresh paint?

Are you talking about oil paint? I didn't know you had to use a respirator with latex. I never have, an dhave never had a problem - jennie2 I also love the smell of fresh paint but have always left the windows open while painting and overnight afterwords, with no problem.

I had an ex boyfriend who was a professional house painter and he always used a respirator for oils. For latex, no.

Depends how sensitive you are. Latex never used to bother me, now it makes me positively ill. If you don't want to use low-VOCs, you can avoid the worst of the VOC emissions by wearing a respirator.

skywaykate, if you just think the smell is kinda icky, try adding some vanilla extract to the paint. Can't remember how much per quart--but you should be able to google it pretty easily.

Cool, thanks for the good tips, I appreciate it...and I was hoping for some low-VOC tips too, as I would like to go in that direction.