Giving and taking a real shellacking!
Having given a room an actual "shellacking" I felt like I had taken one more than I had given one.
Yesterday the Arnold family endeavored to prime our living/dining space for painting. Hoping to quash the last remnants of unpleasant odors that have persisted (albeit in a diminished capacity) since moving here 3 years ago we actually used a shellac primer. We opted for a white-pigmented shellac primer. This stuff is renown for removing stains and taking away funky odors. I learned a few things. First shellac primer is very thin compared to paint. Being thin (less viscous) it splatters very easily. Thus it was a good thing we covered everything because everything was covered in little specks of shellac. Second, we painted everything including the ceiling. Shellacking a white ceiling with white shellac stinks (literally and metaphorically). Painting white over white is exceedingly frustrating. From the time you pour it out of the can into the rolling pan half of it has evaporated (exaggeration!). It dries so fast, both on the surface and in the roller pan that I wondered if my roller pan was leaking! We wore the proper respirators so that Jamie and I must have looked like we were trying out for a Breaking Bad re-boot.
After being nearly spent from priming the room we learned that the primer requires a "top-coating" within 14 days. Translation: you ain't done. You just started! Having just experienced the joy of painting white-on-white with the shellac, we decided to get a ceiling paint that goes on pink and dries white. This was the final thing that I learned. That color-changing paint exists. What a blessing! To paint with something much thicker that splatters much less and to be able to see where the paint was! It's the little things.
The kids were sequestered in their rooms nearly all day for which I commend them. The bunny was forced to be outside most of the day-- not his favorite, but hey, he's a bunny. Those are the brakes.
We hope that the benefit of a nice-looking, un-stinky room outweighs the cost of the shellacking that we took.