So the orange on the walls still needs one more coat, but here’s a preview of the final appearance.

In the end, we painted a first coat with the paint from the specialty store, and then did a second coat with paint from the home improvement store. Even with a similar orange “primer,” the home improvement store paint needs a second coat. (How I miss Behr brand paint!)

At the end of the day, though, I felt pretty happy – everything looks like it is finally coming together.

Nach anstrengender Arbeit hat sich dennoch gelohnt. Mal schauen wie es morgen nach dem letzten Anstrich ausschaut und die Steckdosen wieder an ihrem Platz sind.

Sadly this is only one of many places on the ceiling that will need touching up. However, the band around the top of the walls is finished, with a little bit of paint to spare.

So, I had found an orange color at the home improvement store that was pretty close to what I wanted, but not quite dark enough. That’s what I did the test with. I really wanted to buy good paint from a specialty store, though, because the paint at DIYs in Germany is really not fun to work with and needs a lot of coats to cover properly.
So I went to the specialty store super early to order the paint so that it would get delivered today. Theoretically, they could even mix the exact Pantone color that I wanted – the formulas for all the Pantone colors were programmed into their computer…

On the left is the paint from yesterday and on the right is the good paint from the store today.
Not only is it not darker, it’s actually lighter. So I went back with my 12.5 liter bucket to have them add more something (it ended up being brown). And it seemed to match the sample better, but after doing a test wall, I am not so sure. We can only hope that overnight as it gets really try that it starts to get darker yet. However, I can attest that the quality of the paint is miles better, covering pretty evenly with just one coat.

On the positive side, the new color I chose for the top section looks pretty good and seems to match whichever orange we end up with.

Wichtig noch hinzuzufügen:

Endlich; der angefallenden Bauschutt wurde heute entsorgt. Es war schwierig eine Annahmestelle für den Regips zu finden. Aber am Ende des Tages war er weg! Zwar war es eine kleine Weltreise durch Leipzig, aber er konnte preiswert entsorgt werden und wir hatten wieder Platz. Danke an den Helfer!

Die Vorbereitung der Wände war eine anstrengende Arbeit. Nun folgte die Entscheidung der Farbwahl…

I decided I should try the colors out before buying all of the paint. I’ve never bothered to do that before, and I’ve never had problems before, but I really questioned what the right color for the top portion would be. It sets the painting schedule back a bit, but I am glad I did because the yellow just doesn’t work.

We also painted the areas that seemed to be damp with Isolierungsfarbe. Hopefully the bright white won’t be too much of an issue when painting over with the orange.

Die Isolierungsfarbe war wichtig, um die von unten aufsteigende Feuchtigkeit zu unterbinden.
Hoffentlich sieht man den Anstrich nicht unter der auftragenden Farbe (Orange) durchscheinen.

No photo today, becasue it doesn’t look any different, but we put on two coats of clear, primer-like material (Tiefgrund) today. Tomorrow we can start with some of the painting. I’ve decided that I would rather be safe than sorry and so we are going to try out the color scheme on one of the walls before I buy the full amount of paint. Though I’m not sure what the backup plan is if the chosen colors don’t work out.

If you are in Leipzig, today’s Leipziger Volkszeitung has a short article about Das Fundbuero and the Wächterladen project that enabled the renting of the new space. Unfortunately there is no online link.

Tomorrow, photos – with color!

The developments are not so obvious in photos, but we’ve done the last touch-ups to the walls and ceiling before we start painting.

And we cleaned the floor. It may be hard to believe, but this is a significant improvement over how it was before.

I am excited to start getting some color on the walls, but we’ll have to prime them first, so probably not before Wednesday.

Ein Grund des Putzens war der Beginn des Streichens. In all den Ritzen, Fugen hatte sich der Staub vom Schleifen festgesetzt.

Mit Schrubber und Wasser versuchten wir den Boden zu säubern. Anstrengend, aber notwendig…

The work we’re doing now (patching and sanding, and patching and sanding again) is less obviously seen in photos, however, today we also pried up the rest of a broken tile on the raised area in the back of the store and found out that underneath the poorly laid tile is a stone floor that continues from the beautiful old wall-footings (seen here). The edge is finished with a nice wooden step. Maybe rehabbing the floor will be a project for some weekend after the main renovation is over.

Auf Schatzsuche: Erst glaubten wir einen alten Holzboden unter den Fliesen zu entdecken. Dem war leider nicht so. Dennoch versanken wir in Gedanken, über die Möglichkeiten was wir alles tun könnten…

The last section of wall is plastered, and the first coat of spackle is on the drywall. We’ll be taking a few days off, though, to give my repetitive stress injured wrist a break.

The switch will, of course, have to come back off before painting, but having them on the wall makes me feel like we’re almost done.

There is still some finishing work to be done before the painting, but I thought it was time for some before and after comparisons.

Even though everything is white again (and filled with construction debris), I think there is a huge, positive difference in the feel of the space.

Some highlights of the plaster work:

Friday 3:00 PM and we run out of plaster.
This was probably for the best because I think today was finally the day I was going to pass out from heatstroke.