Painting in tight quarters

Vanilla cream is a good compromise paint.  It's white enough to lighten up the stairway and hall, yellow enough to be warm.  After a morning spent rootling around in the shitpile garage looking for banister brackets, screws, and the stud finder, I became impatient and proceeded to do the stud finding the messy way with a hammer and nail.

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That means tapping a nail in about once an inch until you hit the stud.  After that it was a matter of measure and mark which I used tape to do.  Inch and a half masking tape makes wonderful stud marker.
The footless man and I have very different ways to go about what we see as the job at hand.  We drive each other nuts when the other one asks us to assist.  My solution to helping him is to have a piece of knitting nearby and to sit and knit until he asks for a specific bit of help.  I give him the help and then I go knit.
His solution is to tell me how I should do each part and to grumble and bitch as I do it my way.
I got the bracket holes marked with a screw and a hammer as he shuddered, Eventually he went upstairs and left me alone.  Then I proceeded to wash walls and spackle the stud finding holes.
The stairway part of the hall has been painted and awaits tomorrow when I will put brackets on the wall and screw down the banister.  I have paint on the ass of my designated paint clothes because I bent over in tight quarters and planted a rump mark on the wall.
One thing that I have learned in my misspent life is that you need to wear your old glasses when you paint.  you never know what may happen and it wouldn't be the first time I coated them with paint.