when the room and my mood are dripping

So like all good remodel projects this one hasnt been without its setbacks. Aside from it being impossible to get someone from the flooring retailer (from whom I am resigned to purchase my carpet because their bid came in at about half of the one I got from RC Willey for the same carpet) to come and measure for the carpet, things had been going fairly well until yesterday afternoon. When I had a panic attack.

Im trying to invest a bit more time and money to do this the right way. Which means Im sanding everything before I paint, painting one coat, sanding again, then painting a second coat. But yesterday while I was sanding a little chunk of paint came off and I more or less stopped breathing. What if I had just painted Latex over oil-based paint and the entire room would peel off much like one would peel a banana?

YIKES!

I was fairly certain this wasnt the case because a friend of mine who does faux painting professionally painted my daughters room over a year ago and she had done the alcohol test and decided the paint was Latex. But this is where I start to drive myself and others crazymy OCDC comes out in full glory and I start obsessing over things. What if she had been wrong?

I ransacked the cupboard looking for rubbing alcohol and cotton balls and frantically ran through the house trying desperately to rub off the old paint in various rooms. What if? What am I? Oh no, how will I ever? Assuming the acohol test is even accurate, Im guessing what I have is Latex over oil-based in most rooms, but straight-up oil based in the bathrooms. Which, if I remember correctly, may have been the fashionable thing to do back in the day.

Having no choice at this point but to bravely forge ahead, I proceeded with the second coat in the dining room, because the paint needs to cure for an entire week before the wood flooring is installed next Friday.

Enter panic attack number two. As we pulled the blue masking tape off the ceiling and from around the windows the paint came off (in parts) in this neat little skin of Latex paint. ARGH! Of course then my paint paranoia struck again and I pictured myself standing in a room of freshing painted peeling paint. Quel disastre!

(Heres one thing I wish Id have known before I started painting. And of course, if all else fails, it never hurts to actually read the directions. Although the jury isnt out on the part about how long you can wait to remove tape. If its still too wet, it smudges. If its too dry, your paint peels off. And who knew the use of masking tape required directions?)

Oh well, live-n-learn.

sigh.