Painting: lounge

Sunrise looking out of the kitchen window. 

After the debacle with our defective Fermacell boards, we were faced with re-doing a lot of work. We had discovered that most of the walls in the house had 'ladder lines' (caused by a manufacturing fault in the Fermacell boards) so we had no choice but to go back and re-apply multiple layers of Fermacell's Fine Surface Treatment (FST)... everywhere. It's a kind of lightweight filler/skim coat that is used in place of plastering; great at smoothing out the coarse surface of Fermacell, but not so great at correcting defective boards.  

We had already applied one layer of FST and the 'ladder lines' were still showing, so how many more layers would we need in order to put this right? Nobody (not even Fermacell) really knew - it's one of the problems of using materials that are not in regular use, we found it impossible to get any reliable advice, so we were left to figure it out for ourselves. 

It was a real pain. Light switches and sockets had to be removed and FST trowelled over the walls again. Once dry, the FST had to be sanded flat (again) and to add to our frustrations, we found this had to be done at night, so that lamps could be used to show up the shadows of any slight imperfections. To add injury to insult, Alan picked up a repetitive strain injury in his shoulder from the constant trowelling and sanding. 

After several tiring nights, we had completed the extra layers of FST in the lounge and it was ready to be painted. 

Having been impressed with the Little Greene paint we'd used in the hall, we decided to use it again for the lounge, choosing a (rather inappropriately-named) shade called 'Kitchen Green'.

We'd considered several colours but had realised that with so many windows in the house, the interior decoration worked best when reflecting the views outside. And outside it was all trees, fields, sky and stone (as the window in the picture shows), so natural greens, browns, blues and greys seemed the most harmonious choices.

After all our work to correct the issue, the unwanted lines in the Fermacell board seemed to have been concealed; even with the lights on, the walls looked flat and smooth. It wasn't perfect (by our standards at least) but it was a significant improvement on what we had.