Paint has been used for decades in private homes to change the color of the walls in order to create a certain feeling in a room.  For example, our interior designer chose a dark grey color for our bedroom to produce a feeling of calm in the room in which we rest.  The same was done for the guest bedroom, albeit a lighter shade of grey.  In our study, we have a yellow color, most likely chosen to keep me awake while I work diligently (or not) on the house blog. 

Unfortunately, although our interior designer spent much effort to chose just the right colors for our house, it doesn't make any difference if the paint does not stick to the walls.  You would imagine that with the number of houses that have been painted in history, the paint industry might have had the time and resources to come up with paint that actually sticks to the walls.  I am sure the paint industry will turn around and blame the painters for not having primed the walls well enough and the painters may say that the paint did not have long enough to cure.  In any case, we are having trouble with the paint.

About ten weeks after the master closet was painted (a time, I am sure, that is long enough for the curing process to complete), we had a friend build us some built-in cabinets in the closet.  However, he does not do finish work so he did not want to stain the built-ins so that was left to Peter and I.  I went through the entire closet and carefully taped off the walls to prevent the stain from spreading onto the walls.  This took quite some time - much longer that Peter thought it should.  Then Pater came in and did almost all of the staining.

A few days after we were finished, I started to pull the tape off the walls and to my horror, much of the paint came off the walls with the tape.  I tried every which way to pull the tape without pulling paint; I pulled the tape at 180 degrees, at almost 0 degrees, I pulled it as fast as I could and as slow as I could.  It made little difference.  If the paint was going to come off the wall, it came off regardless of how the tape was separated from the wall.

In the end, we have lots of tape with paint on it

and lots of wall missing paint.

Right down to the drywall.

Some may turn the blame back on me saying I used the wrong tape, left the tape on too long, or removed the tape with an improper technique.  I point those people to the guest bathroom.  When the contractor redid the floor in there, they put plastic up on the walls to protect the walls and taped that plastic at the bottom of the wall.   When the tape was removed in this room, again the paint came off with it.  The drywall in this case is blue as it is greenboard.

So the paint failure problem is not solely on me.   Seems it is just another thing that is not quite right about this house.