Melissa Markovich and Tiffany also finished touching the up last few places where the brown trim needed a first coat, and started the first coat of paint in the two washrooms.
While the girls worked on those other sections, I painted another batch of ceiling tiles. The tiles are very time consuming. I can only do about one eighth of the restaurant at a time, because I need to take them down, roll them, and then spread them out on table-tops and drop-sheets to dry. The moisture from the paint gets into the tiles and softens them up considerably, so even though the surface of each tile dries within two or three hours, it takes about ten to twelve hours before they stiffen up enough to maintain their integrity to be reinstalled in the ceiling. So in other words, even if we get all the other painting done this weekend, I'm still going to have to be working on batches of tiles every day next week. The tiles also suck up an amazingly large amount of paint (these are the "hard" ceiling tiles, not the new type with the soft plastic surface layer). In fact, I've wondered whether or not it might be cheaper to replace the existing tiles with the new type, because the new type would use a lot less paint. But then I'd have to buy the new tiles, and the labour involved would be a bit more, so I probably wouldn't be any further ahead in the end. Anyway, despite the headaches, the ceiling is looking a LOT better where it has already been painted. Besides, the brown paint will hide the water stains where there have been minor leaks in the ceiling.
