Interior Primer and Paint -- Covering up that Luan

Here is the first view of primer on the walls. I like the color of the 3/16" luan plywood, but it started to seem a little like the color of bologna, and it was time to cover it up.  Looking up at the port loft windows through the sleeping loft joists, it may be seen that Kyle has been busy. There are battens installed on the ceiling, tacked up onto the rafters, to help keep the luan from sagging, and to cover up the seams between pieces.  Additional battens have been placed along many of the other seams between luan pieces, although some have been left uncovered, where cupboards are likely to be installed flush against the walls. Once Kyle got the battens under control, KW the painter primed/sealed the raw luan plywood.

In a view of the port side cathedral ceiling, more battens may be seen under the coat of primer. Also Kyle's nice 1" x 3" peak trim is visible covering the electrical conduit pipe that runs down the inside peak of the house. The goal, as far as battens on the luan are concerned, is to cover seams, but also to give some definition to areas of the house.  On the outside corner of the cathedral-ceiling-to-loft-cheek-wall meeting point, battens provide a clean line. Just next to that outside corner there is an inside corner at the meeting of the loft cheek wall and the loft window wall.  This inside corner will be trimmed with battens too.  Installing interior sheathing, whether it be drywall or sheets of paneling or plywood, cannot be a perfectly exact science. With dry wall, unevenly matched seams may be mudded and sanded into unnoticability. But in this situation, I we decided to employ battens to cover the rough edges.

This view was taken near the end of November, between the primer/sealer coat and the finish coat of paint; I was standing with my back against the bow wall.  Looking aft, the storage loft may be seen, as well as the plethora of openings for outlets, switches and junction boxes. However it is quite clear that the deliciously warm radiator is not being powered from the tiny house itself, but is plugged in, in this case with a 50 foot heavy duty O/S cable extension cord, at the innermost wall outlet of C's garage. 

I spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to guess the color of paint I would be inspired by having in the tiny house.  As an artist people often expect me to be really good at this chore, but it is essentially impossible for me to picture the difference between colors on the walls.  So I was considering any of the lightest two chips on all of these pages of KW's paint book.  Whew!  I held the teensy little things up to all different things all over the tiny house and all over my apartment (framed art and fabric colors, rugs, everything!).  Each chip color is influenced by anything it is abutting, every other nearby color in the paint book, and even by the white of the little strip between the chips! Impossible!  Add in the knowledge that warm creamy colors can look wildly different in different lights -- morning, afternoon, cloudy, sunny -- and the thought of trying to use LED lights without REALLY knowing what the light temperatures will be like, and all I felt I was doing was taking a casual potshot at the idea of paint color (Sherwin-Williams Jersey Cream). Interestingly, I ended up pretty closely matching my apartment bedroom, not particularly consciously.  At least I like the color !  I knew I would be happy with it in the loft bedroom space, and I am.  However it won't be optimal on the downstairs gallery wall, or probably in the kitchen and bathroom areas.  Sigh. I am very happy with the choice of Porter Paint Silken Touch Flat paint so far; it has extra ingredients in the paint to make it easy to scrub and wipe off, and to repel stains.  In such a small space, I was told, it will be more likely than usual that people will be bumping into the walls.  True.  Hopefully it will be as rugged as I need in a studio-cum-workshop-cum-reception space.  Anyway, below are two photos, taken with the same camera, I think on the same day -- I think the late afternoon sun suddenly came out for the second one.  You get the idea. 

Often the color looks like it does in this photo of the starboard wall, a neutral off-white tan....

But equally as often it looks like this -- sunshine, butter, lemon yellow.  I knew all this, but I still had to be the one to choose the color.... It may be obvious that poor KW will be putting another, lighter coat (Crisp Linen) on several areas of the interior, when he returns to apply two coats of spar varnish to all the raw wood inside the house.  By the way, it may be noticed here that Kyle has installed mitered corner loft window trim, which he ripped from boards I salvaged years ago from art student CG's shelves upstairs from me. Gorgeous.  

"Proceed as the way opens."                --  Shaker saying