It ain't easy being green.

The experiment with paving paint for my new tap boards has not been wholly successful, sad to say. The green looks nice and, at Le @ Third On the Right's suggestion, I did in fact end up adding a decorative stencil (pretty butterflies, in silver and purple) which pleased my students, particularly the very small ones, no end. So that was the good part.

But then....

When we first got them into the hall, we found minor bowing had occurred. We couldn't see it when they were arrayed round our backyard but when we laid them down side by side there were a multitude of small ripples - an accident waiting to happen. Fortunately I came armed with gaffer tape which subdued the undulation somewhat and after a few nights of storing them side up they have flattened out nicely. Phew.

Next, I began to realise that paving paint seems not to be any tougher than plain paint and this is rather disappointing, given that added toughness was pretty much the whole point. I've had them for 2 weeks now and the paint is already quite chipped.

Finally, and maybe worst of all, paving paint has turned out to be MUCH MORE SLIPPERY. So much so that it caused a sliding frenzy (where they were doing it on purpose to impress each other) in the Junior Shufflers class and one of its members who shall remain nameless but who is my eldest son put the tip of their tap shoe into the plasterboard and made a nasty whole therein. Hello spackfiller.

I am still trying to work out the best solution to the whole problem, but in the meantime, and on the advice of a friend who runs a ballet school, I have taken to washing the boards with Ajax (floor detergent) and Coca-cola. I said wouldn't lemonade do? and she said no it has to be coke. So coke it was. I was very afraid that I'd come in the next day to find the boards crawling with ants, but can only assume that blending the detergent with the sugar is what kept the critters away. Anyway, the coke floor was much more effective than the hairspray on the students' tap shoes. Although possibly the fact that I'd inadvertently bought a "non-sticky" hairspray (D'oh) might have unfairly rigged that comparison...

Still, the green comes up nicely in the photos.