painting day 1....

Today was an interesting day.

We spent the day priming and through trial and error learnt the best technique to use the primer/paint. My previous experience with this type of paint has been on a large area situated outside. Today was completely different. Alison and I are working around the general day to day workings of the car park - which means having to corden off certain areas at any one time, for example only areas in front of one lift on each level so people with pushchairs etc can still get to the upper floors without any difficulties. Add to this jigsaw puzzle the fact that the primer and paint becomes unusable in 30 minutes!!!!

We soon learnt on our first attempt: I mixed up the whole tin of primer and managed two of the levels, but when I arrived at the third I was confronted with the primer left smoking! yes, smoking, it was already going off and it hadn't been 30 minutes. Then the tray and roller started to smoke - I have never seen anything like it. In fact the roller ended up slightly melted and stuck firmly to the tray - oops!

What happens is if the resin based paint is left in the tin it reacts and goes off quicker and becomes extremely hot, hence the smoke. So, taking this all into account I only mixed up half the amount and it worked a treat.

Alison priming between stairs.

We eventually managed to prime the level 4/3 stairwell and the areas outside the left lift on levels four and three too. I had hoped to had done more today but many factors came up, including starting late and the carpark was having problems with their lifts which made it harder to close off the stairs. But I'm feeling positive about tomorrow, I will start painting on the designs as i have a couple of lovely helpers carrying on woth the priming - many thanks!

Speaking of the designs I have also re-worked a few of them because it was brought to my attention that it was felt that they didn't show enough of the children's original drawings. As you can see (in the re-worked designs below) I have added a few more characters e.g an octopus, some different cars and flowers. But I haven't been able to go into much detail because of the nature of the paint and the timescale.

water

air

land