TFT... tape. float. texture.

I'd read some really good advice - probably the best advice we've followed yet - to hire a professional to tape and float and not try to DIY this.  (Actually it said hire a professional to drywall, tape, and float.  But Chris and Wes did a bang-up job of hanging dry wall!)  Taping and floating is really like an art.  Without much experience and practice with the technique, you can really screw it up and just make your walls look terrible with lines running across them.

So we called Martin Lopez.  (He's a painter my friend Emily Parker recommended awhile back.  We called him  when we were considering hiring someone to de-popcorn our entire house last July.  He came out and gave us a quote and by the cost, it was clear that he didn't want to deal with our popcorn about as much as we didn't want to deal with our popcorn.  So, as you know, we've been doing it ourselves, one room at a time.  Do you sense my excitement?)

Martin is a really, really great guy - if you ever need a painter.  And does a great job.  His friend PoPo actually did the taping and floating.  He did all the wall seams and actually floated the entire ceiling to cover up all the nicks from scraping popcorn (we've always just done each nick individually, patching really, but this looks so much better).

 Here's PoPo floating the laundry room.  He's reallly amazing to watch on these stilts.  They're just like an extension of his legs when he's working.  It looked so easy...

He made the mistake of leaving the stilts at our house overnight because he was coming back the next day for the second coat.  So of course we had to try them out - you knew we would.  Waaaaaaayyyyyy harder than it looks.  We could hardly stand in one place on them!

 After PoPo floated - Martin came back with another buddy to sand and texture everything.  The texture is a really subtle, roll-on texture.  It's really just joint compound mixed with primer/ceiling paint.  It's so nice and smooth!

 Ahhh... beautiful, smooth, white wall.  Feeling more sane already.

 I wanted to paint over the texture to see how it would look with some color and a little gloss.  No - we're not painting the kitchen red, this was just leftover from our entryway makeover and it was Texas Independence Day - so I opted for a red flag of the Lone Star State!

 Beaz is proud to be a Texan!

 

While he was there, PoPo also re-patched the patch Chris had done in the ceiling of our living room when he fell through while installing our radiant barrier in the attic last summer (that's another post... another day...) Chris had done his best to patch it, but we were never extremely happy with the result.  So it was nice of PoPo and Martin to clean it up.  You can still vaguely see the rectangular outline toward the back corner of the ceiling.  They also did the ceiling in the hallway which I'd de-popcorned the week before.