Painting a room red has turned out to be a very big mistake.

Well, maybe not so much of a mistake as a misguided adventure. Glidden's Victorian Red is like a ... crimson. One coat of Victorian Red is like ... blood. Bright red arterial blood.

With the other two rooms that we've painted thus far, one coat of paint is all it's taken to complete the job. The living room was done in one evening, and the stairway... well, the stairway took a little longer due to the 20 foot ceiling, and the fact that it contains stairs. I can honestly attest that that stairway will remain Roslyn's Blue until the day a trained professional painter comes to paint over it.

Yesterday, we started painting the 2nd bedroom. I was so very excited to leave the cotton-candy-on-crack pink behind in favor of my deep rich crimson red. But it was clear from the outset that something was very wrong. When we started painting, it was very watery and thin. Although much easier to actually apply than the other two colors, it had poor coverage. Wtf?

I finally called Glidden Paint up and to their credit, a real live person actually picked up the phone. I explained our situation, and told her that in comparing all 3 cans, the only difference was some small unexplained label that said "base 1" on our old cans and "base 3" on the new can.

She was very helpful and told me that for the dark dark colors, a different sort of base is required. For lighter colors, they can use base that contains titanium (I think that's what she said), which is white. And thick. But for darker colors, a thinner, more translucent base is needed. She said that if you tried to add Victorian Red to a thick white base, the amount of pigment needed would easily overflow the can. And even then it would only turn out pink. Nope, Victorian Red necessitates the use of Translucent Base 3, which needs a smaller amount of pigment to achieve the desired result. Unfortunately, it also makes it thin and watery.

She then said it would take 3-4 coats (!!!!!) to get my rich dark crimson red! Dude, painting is very exciting at first, but it gets old very quickly. Your arms get tired, you get covered in paint, the smell!, the mess... it's such a happy time when you've slaved over an odiforous can of paint for hours only to whisk away all the masking tape and plastic to reveal all the touch up you now have to do to the trim because the tape came off during painting. Heh :-)

We were denied this gloriousness yesterday. We had to wait 24 hours for the first coat to dry (a fact that I learned from Helpful Paint Lady, NOT the Label On The Can). Today I have to work, so we can't apply the 2nd coat until tomorrow. Bummer!

Until then, my 2nd bedroom will look like a murder-in-progress. Sigh.