River Rock, continued

First, a few Before pictures from February 6th, when I started this lil' project from hell. The girls were dying to "help," so I let them. After about 20 minutes they realized that painting is tedious and dull, and decided to go play Risk instead. They had fun while it lasted, though.

That horrible chandelier (you can see a bit of it in the upper right corner) is so on its way out. Carol, do you want it?



Mo was really good at edging! Too bad she lost interest; I could have used a permanent helper for that part.



Em was utterly delighted to be painting!



Next, the Technique. (I didn't take any During pictures, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say that each coat until the very last one was awful, horrible, bad.) This is in the order of things that occurred to me and/or things I tried as it kept getting worse and worse:

1. Prime. Prime, prime, prime. Now, I did not prime when I did our bedroom last summer in RL Suede, and it turned out really good with only 2 coats:



I mean, really, how great is that?!

So I assumed (assuming, always so dangerous) that the same would hold true with RL's River Rock. WRONG. Prime -- and get that primer tinted to match the paint. That's huge. I cannot even tell you how huge it is. People, TINTED PRIMER IS YOUR FRIEND.

2. The instructions and how-to video say to use a 3" brush to cut in, and special 4" and 9" Ralph Lauren roller covers for the, well, rolling. The brush, yes. You need that brush.

The rollers...

Right, don't even bother with the 4" roller. It's more of a hassle than it's worth. Cut in --generously! more on that in step 3 -- with the brush, and then get to work with the 9" roller. However, using the recommended RL roller cover caused a lot of problems. It got gobbed up with the little rocks within seconds of starting, and then left big, uneven smears of rock in some places and just paint in others. It didn't matter how often I changed the cover or whether I did the entire room with it, or if it was the 2nd coat or the 5th: the results were the same. Streaky, nasty walls. In desperation I switched over to a 9" foam roller with a 1/2" nap for what ended up being the final coat (thank God) and oh! I wish I had been working with that from the start. Huge difference. The rocks didn't gob up on the roller cover. The paint went on smooth and, more importantly, dried smooth and streak-free.

I was so happy, I almost cried.

3. Saturate that brush and roller. I am serious. They've got to be practically dripping with paint every time they touch the wall. The more paint, the better. You cannot put too much on. If you think you've got too much, you probably need more.

4. Now, this might be due to humidity issues (like, at the moment in cold, dry Minnesota, we have none, and that can mess with fresh paint), but things started to get a little better when I added some Floetrol to the paint, about 3 pints to a gallon. It went on better, and the streaking, although still happening, wasn't quite as bad. But I was still very unhappy with the results, so in desperation I switched to the 1/2" foam roller I talked about in step 2, and...

5. A mix of RL's River Rock and Behr's Faux Glaze for what ended up being the final coat. I'd come across this suggestion on a few help boards but was strangely reluctant to try it (which was silly; I mean, with all the problems I was having, it's not like it was going to make things worse). Okay, I'm totally sold on it now. It works. Oh, does it work, especially when used with that 1/2" foam roller. Maybe I'm giving the Glaze too much credit and the roller alone would have done the trick, or maybe it was totally the Glaze and the roller didn't do anything to help...but it sure didn't hurt to use a foam roller to apply a mix made up of approximately 1/3 RL River Rock and 2/3s Behr Faux Glaze. Like I said in # 2, it went on smooth and dried smooth and streak-free. Joy!

To sum up, here's what I've learned and what I'll be doing when I start in on part 2 of this project, i.e. the living room:

1. Prime with a tinted primer.
2. Use a 3" brush and 9" foam roller with a 1/2" nap.
3. Add 3 pints Floetrol to 1 gallon River Rock for the base coat (coats? I'm hoping this time it really will be done in 2 coats like the instructions say, but we'll see.).
4. Apply the paint generously.
5. Mix 2/3s Behr's Faux Glaze with 1/3 River Rock for the final coat.

Also, by that final coat I was so paranoid about the damn streaks that after each wall was done and still wet, I went over the entire surface one last time with the roller, very lightly and using continuous strokes. Did that also make a difference? No idea, but it's certainly worth a mention.

I started painting February 6th...and finished yesterday, February 15th. Here are the Final Results.

This is what it looks like up really really close. Cool, no?



And this is what it looks like from a few feet away.


It's beautiful! I'm still a little too raw from this experience to say whether it was worth all the hassle, but it does look very, very nice. And I'm crossing my fingers that, having learned a whole lot while doing part 1, things will go much better with the living room's part 2...which I'm going to start doing right now. Whee.