On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 5:38 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Painting the top few feet of our walls (top of the door frame to the
ceiling) would be easy, but painting the ceiling itself would be difficult detail-wise. Rollers on sticks wouldn't get the all the edges. There are many edges because the ceiling is WW2 style. I asked Tony for his opinion because he seems to know a lot about painting. He recommended getting professional estimates. He said if the cost is exorbitant then he can probably get some of his worker to come help, but he emphasized that the tall, large ceiling really should he done by pros to look halfway decent. I will get a few estimates.
But since I erred and let out the secret, I might as well tell you guys about it.
Our museum room is a big boring white box.
The ceiling is high (10 ft.?) with about 3 feet between the top of the door frames and the ceiling itself. We think it would look much better if we paint that area (all around the room) and the ceiling a dark shade of blue. That would bring people's eyes down to the artifacts, hide much of the big ugly ceiling, and we further plan to break up the blue/white line with creative placement of signs (and also some LED TVs).
Thus we're seeking the most efficient way of painting the ceiling. Cheapest way is DIY, but that would also be the worst quality. :)
I think I can safely say I'm not the only one who has no idea about what problem you have with the ceiling. I thought the room looked great as a start for the new museum wing. It is a nice change of pace since the old museum wing. I don't know about the rest of you but the ceiling was the ultimately the farthest thing from my mind to peer up glazing at nothing with all of the splendid artifacts in the museum. The only time I ever did look at the ceiling was after my trip while looking at the photos with just being curious how much lighting there was in the room. Aren't the artifacts still not good enough to keep the people interested and occupied ?? I find that hard to believe. I'm very curious to know how you surmised with your human logic that people keep staring at the ceiling instead of the artifacts. What on earth is so wrong with a white room. White helps reflect sunlight and the lightening in the room. It's the most ecological color to use, and beyond that you really prefer to keep it bright with a variety of shades to make it attractive. This renovation sounds like the beginnings of an adhoc html webpage on Geocities from the 1990s. How about before trying to .mask. whatever perception of problem which you might have with the ceiling, try adding some adornments that is befitting of a museum before creating a disaster with a paint job. Is it so urgent to splash gallons of some bland color cause nobody wants to spend the time to be creative. Avoid turning that into a some eerily cavernous habitat from Colossal cave with bright white lights beaming down from the ceiling while expecting a Grue to jump upon you. You know the saying about a movie production, the filming can be great [the artifacts], but if the soundtrack sucks ass [the interior], the movie will still be crap [the museum]. How about for starters, hold off on the geek gadgets. Replace those friggin' awful ghetto paint-can stanchions with the actual thing. Get somebody with some artistic talent to make the wall presentations, you just provide the historical content which gets embedded into the artwork. Somebody that can do more than just print out pictures from a google search, one than can actually design and create some artwork using inexpensive materials. Buy them the materials, it's cheap. You can get students from an art school to volunteer for this. And then maybe, maybe !!, instead of blanking that entire ceiling and surroundings with some awful bland color, how about being creative here too. Get another art student to volunteer and paint a little historical mural up there - like Michelangelo. The scaffolding is not so expensive to rent. The painting tarps are dirt cheap. So if some visitors do happen to look up, I don't know who or why still, but then they have a more supremely interesting view to enjoy than a friggin' black hole above their head. It's time you quit being so cheezy, it's doesn't cost a fortune to make it appear professional. Begin frugal is not supposed to look cheap. that's my 2cents Dan [pun intended] -- _ ____ / \__/ Scotty, We Need More Power !! \_/ _\__ Aye, Cap'n, but we've only got 80 col's !!