High Humidity, With a Chance of Paint.

The weather over the past three days is enough to challenge anyone. Don’t get me wrong, I love summer, but this is beyond a joke! There might be a slight breeze blowing but the high humidity overrides any benefit from the movement of the leaves.

Looking at the weather report for my area shows that the high humidity today, is a lot less than the 98% of a few days ago, but it is still bad!

That’s Celsius, not Fahrenheit

I don’t usually put the air-conditioner on because I hate they way it dries out the air. Some people sleep with them on – but not me. My bedroom window is open all year round, and in summer the fan whirs happily above my bed. Yep – you’ll often hear me complain about how hot it is, but I just hate having the air-con on.

But not so the last two days! I had to give in because the heat and high humidity were unbearable. It felt like my head would explode!

I still can’t sleep with air-con on, but I had relief from the heat for at least a few hours through the day.

Paint!

Today, I can’t put the air-con on, despite the high humidity. One of the jobs I have to get done is painting a kitchen chair. I can’t procrastinate any longer, today is the day!

Most of my painting projects happen on the balcony at the back of my living-space. There’s enough room. and I have a built in workbench – the top of the air-conditioning unit. By throwing a plastic sheet over the top, I have plenty of room to store the paint, roller, brush, whatever, while I work on whatever I’m painting.

Oh, and I’ve learned (the hard way) to work a bit smarter with DIY jobs. I only stripped down two of the chairs, leaving a total of two fully intact chairs to sit on. I might add, I stripped those two chairs down a few weeks ago, and I’ve only managed to paint one so far. Did I use the word ‘procrastinate’ earlier? Yep – thought I did. It’s amazing what jobs you find around the house while avoiding the ones you don’t really want to do..

The chair in question was already on the balcony so I went out a while ago to get started. Less than a minute later the chair, paint, plastic sheet and painting tools were all in the kitchen.

It was way too hot out there!

It isn’t much cooler in the kitchen, but at least the sun isn’t beating down on me, threatening to burn my shirt into my skin.

When the high humidity runs down your cheeks

Have you ever tried painting with perspiration running from your forehead, down your cheeks, dripping onto anything in its path? Including the chair you’re trying to paint?

No problem, I thought, I’ll turn the air-con on. Oh wait, you have to have ventilation while you paint. If I turn the air-con on I have to close the doors and windows.

For the next minute I pondered the validity of the ventilation rule. I was using Chalk Paint. Does that have toxicity?

I put my nose near the edge of the paint tin for a whiff of the paint.

It smelled okay to me – actually – it smelled good. But then I remembered I added some Essential Oils to the newly opened tin a few weeks earlier. For once I didn’t consult Google on the pros and cons. Sorry, Paint-Police – I just did it.

And that came about because I painted my bed with Chalk Paint a few years ago. I’m not sure if it was the paint, or the wax I applied afterwards, but it’s had a bit of a ‘smell’ to it since then. That’s another job on my To Do List – repaint the bed.

Back to the chair…

With the paint smelling just fine, my mind wandered off on a hidden toxic journey. What if the paint has deep, dark toxic chemicals that don’t have any odour? And what if those deep, dark toxic chemicals get into the air-conditioning? They could end up being delivered to every corner of my abode, including the bedroom. Heck, I could be breathing in those deep, dark toxic chemicals while I sleep!

I looked back at the unpainted chair, just as another drop of perspiration made a futile attempt at escape – the corner of my painting-apron caught it just in time. I gave the rest of my brow a cursory wipe as the high humidity hung ominously over me.

And then I thought some more…

The kitchen window was open. And there was air, albeit hot-air, circulating between the front and back doors. Oh, and the fan in the lounge room was in full-swing.

I picked up the roller and started.

Did I mention – I am not a painter?

When I painted the first chair I used a brush. I figured it would be good for getting into all the little fiddly bits. And it was – but the job took forever and there were lots of little lines left where it should have been smooth.

Since then, I’ve fallen in love with the little microfibre rollers that I bought to paint a wall – that was before the man at the Hardware store convinced me to use a B-I-G roller for the wall. I’m sure I saw his eyes roll when I told him about the little rollers I’d bought. But at least he was gracious enough not to make any comments about my apparent lack of knowledge or skills.

Using the roller to paint the chair was much quicker! And I’m hoping there’ll be less need to sand off the mistakes. Although the first coat looks a bit thin – is it supposed to look thin?

Well, it’s probably dry already. But I sat down to write while I waited for the first coat to dry – and it is so much cooler here in my writing chair. The breeze is now blowing cooler air across the room between the two open doors. The high humidity seems to be dropping a little. And the clouds are increasing with a promise of rain.

We’ve had a few storms lately. Each one promising to release its grip on the hot steamy weather, which it does while the rain is falling. But within minutes of the rain stopping, we are back in the grip of heat and high humidity.

Will this heat and high humidity ever end?

Not likely.

The humidity is higher now than it was earlier today. As you can see, we don’t get much of a reprieve at night.

But at least I’ve made a decent start on the chair. The second coat is on and I’m just waiting for it to dry so I can do the other bits.

I paint everything white because my hair is white – and the paint doesn’t show up on it. Somehow I always start painting from the top instead of the bottom, so I usually end up with paint on my hair… but because this year was going to be my year for bright colours (or was that last year?) – I’m thinking about painting each chair a different colour. And since I haven’t decided which bright coloured fabric I’ll use to cover the seat yet, I should probably decide on the chair colour first. I should only need one coat of colour over the two coats of white – right?

I’m not good with matching colours so my house is a mis-match of pinks, blues, gold, orange, red and a colour called Kakadu – kind of an earthy green. And of course – white!

So any colour should work well…

Any suggestions?

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