'X' marks the spot

Note: If a search-engine has led you here for information on the search-and-rescue X's on houses following Hurricane Katrina, you probably won't be interested in the following blog post about my foyer walls. I mean sure - there was Katrina.. and there are X's... but it's not quite the same. For Katrina X's you might be more interested in this: Those pesky Katrina house X's.

"X"

Or at least the general area of our next Katrina repair project: The foyer.

Our foyer was originally so nicely painted with a faux leather texture. It was definitely the one room in the house that I did not want to have to repaint. And we tried our best to save it... During the initial sheetrock removal following the flooding - the sheetrock was all removed from the other side of the wall so as to leave the textured walls intact.

It would have worked too - as later when we checked for mold in those walls there was none to be found. The problem came when the original warped baseboards were removed -- leaving a scraggly caulk line and torn sheetrock just a hair above what the new baseboards would cover.

When the new baseboards went in we thought perhaps we could just carefully camoflauge the new caulk line without having to repaint and faux texture entire walls. It was a brilliant plan... and it would have worked too -- if not for the big black x's we had drawn on the walls to mark them for demolition. Er.. oops.

THEN I came up with another brilliant idea.... I'm a big fan of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. I've found very little that they can't actually get off a wall with a little extra elbow grease. And sure enough -- they were very effective at removing black sharpie from faux textured walls without a lot of damage. It did, however, take about one hour of vigorous scrubbing per big black 'X' to get the job done. Three hours and big black 'X's later I sat down to admire my work when I noticed (for the first time) a rather large and sloppy sheetrock repair behind the front door.....

Large sheetrock repair. (Note: Not a very good repair considering a hole is still visible in the center of the new mud... I wonder how much we paid for that?)

I did scream.

A lot.

I also sulked for months.

Then I textured the girls future bedroom for some faux-finishing practice.

And - finally - this afternoon I took the plunge and bought the paint and glaze for the foyer.

Base: Warm Buff Glaze: Mocha Syrup

I will now spend the rest of the night obsessively cutting in for the basecoat (not priming this one.. nope.. not this time) and will hopefully be ready to glaze by some point next week. It's a sickness, you know... If there is a new paint color in the house I can't let it sit unopened for long.