My daughter wanted a bedroom re-do, so I helped her decide
how to transform her room into one that more matches her style now and less
like when she was three.
This week seemed like one as good as any to start on the
transformation, and as there are several rooms in our home that need freshening,
I made the decision to power through the rest of them when hers was finished. We can’t afford to hire professional painters for
the work, and my husband works all day and all night seemingly, so the chore
falls squarely on my shoulders. It’s a
lesson in home ownership: painting must be done on a regular basis and you will
most likely have to do it yourself.
If someone would have told me that before I signed a
mortgage, I would have said no thanks.
Renting is where it's at.
I hate painting. It’s
messy, it’s smelly, I’m terrible at it, and it never seems to end. When the walls are finished, you may as well
do the trim. And the doors. Outlet covers off, outlet covers on. Furniture moves around to make room for the
displaced items in a to-be painted room until everyone is uncomfortable and I
can’t find anything.
I got my supplies, cried a little, turned on my favorite
Pandora radio station, took a deep breath, and steeled myself for daily
self-inflicted torture, at least for a couple of weeks.
Painting by yourself is a lonely, isolating chore. It’s mindless, and unlike other mindless and
lonely household tasks like cleaning or laundry, with painting you’re confined
to one room until it is finished and that makes me sad, because I don’t have
freedom to quit or walk around. I’m a
slave to the paint can and the brushes and rollers that will surely harden and
be ruined if I take a half a day or week or month break. You can do that with
cleaning and laundry.
Which I don’t but you can if you don’t mind living in filth
and wearing dirty clothes.
Maybe the only thing I like about painting is having all
that time to think. I can pass an hour
or two staring out the window thinking about life and the world, but that feels
a little indulgent. At least if I’m
painting I’m being productive. Then I
thought I could make it more productive by jotting down some of my thoughts while
I was painting today; maybe I would have an interesting insight or find an
important solution or maybe even discover a million-dollar idea.
What I found is that painting is in fact a soul-sucking chore,
because time spent painting produces very little valuable insight.
But at least I got a blog post about it. Enjoy my innermost thoughts from a day of
paining.
(That was an unintended typo. But I’m keeping it.)
I hate painting. I want to cry. At least I thought to pull my hair back this
time. No white primer in my hair for
weeks this time.
Crap. Paint in my hair.
I wonder what my old
dance teacher/elementary school boyfriend/that girl I hung out with who stole
a bottle of champagne on that cruise back in the 80s/that old dude who flipped
me off on the road in front of the kids is doing right now.
(Mumford and Sons song playing) I love Mumford and Sons. I
wonder if they’re coming to this area. I
need to remember to Google it. I’ll go
ahead and add that to my “things I want to Google” list that is already a mile
long.
Oooh, Coldplay too. They never get old. I wonder if Gwyneth Paltrow ever painted the
rooms in her house? She probably never
had to paint anything, unless it’s for cultivating a latent artistic talent or
for a movie role. She has time to do
that, do nothing but cultivate her own talents.
Probably she doesn’t even know how to paint a wall.
I bet if she did,
she’d be better than me at it.
Great. Paint on the underside of the dropcloth. How does that happen?
At least I have more
life experience than Gwyneth Paltrow.
Then again, I never
won an Oscar. I guess winning an Oscar
trumps painting a room on the life experience continuum any day. I probably could, though. If I was an actor. Or at least wasn’t terrified of performing in
front of people. I could win an Oscar
for a screenplay. Are screenplay Oscars
considered less important than acting Oscars? Certainly they’re more important
than those scientific Oscars that have a separate ceremony hosted by whatever starlet
is famous right now and never will be again ever.
Actually that Oscar
party is probably the wildest of all Oscar parties. Those scientific people are crazy partiers,
just like in in Revenge of the Nerds or that 1980’s Val Kilmer movie, what was it called? (Real Genius.)
I wonder if Gwyneth
Paltrow ever accidentally read my blog while cruising through Blogger late at
night?
If I didn’t have paint
all over my hands/face/legs/butt/arms I would totally give Pandora a huge
thumbs down for this song. Am I in
Braveheart? Terrible. (It was Breath
of Life by Florence and the Machine)
Well, I guess I know
that I’ll never get through an entire Florence and Machine concert.
Wow. This paint really stinks. I feel like I’ve been huffing. Do kids still do that? My brain hurts. Wonder how many brain cells I’ll kill in the
next few weeks.
Whose idea was it to
put all these stupid glow in the dark stars on the ceiling? Bad idea.
Bad, bad idea.
I wonder if the people
in Lowe’s really know what they’re doing.
This primer clearly is not going to cover up all those huge polka dots I
painted that were a worse idea than the glow stars.
The next person in
this house that wants any color on their walls other than white or cream gets a
neck punch.
Lowe’s employees probably
hire people to do all their painting for them.
DIY diehards are obviously people who I can’t relate to.
Oops. I should only buy paint that matches the
carpet.
I wonder what the percent
likelihood is that the glop of paint that falls from the brush to the floor
will end up on the carpet, in that tiny eighth-inch spot that was left
uncovered by the dropcloth? Today it’s
like ninety-five percent.
Whoops. More white paint on the carpet. At least I can rub it in. I’m going to have to find a piece of furniture
to cover all the gray primer that dripped.
Lowe’s really needs to
do combo deals on carpet replacement and paint.
I’d be their best customer.
Wonder if painters use
gallons of wall paint to make art? Isn’t
that what Jackson Pollock did? I’m kind
of doing a Pollock in this room right now.
I’m so bad at this. If I was bartering a skill to trade for
painting, I’d have a hard time coming up with something. What am I good at that is equally as valuable
as painting? Folding clothes?
I’m sweating. At least
I’m getting some exercise. It makes me
feel better about skipping the gym this week to get this done. Of course, on a scale of one to ten, with one
being the most tortuous form of exercise and ten being the most fun, painting
is negative seventy-nine billion.
There are probably no
fat painters in the world. If there are,
what do they eat? Lard sandwiches,
probably. Or maybe they have thyroid
problems.
I remember when we used
to say that there were 6 billion people in the world. Then the seven billionth person was
born. So for years we were saying there
are six billion of us, six billion people in the world – when there were really
seven billion. That’s like saying something
that costs 19.99 is just 19 dollars.
Keith (my husband) does that
all the time. “It’s only two hundred
dollars.” No. It isn’t.
It’s two hundred and ninety nine dollars. That’s three hundred
dollars. And we have been seven billion
for a while now.
If I had seven billion
dollars I would never have to paint my walls.
Ever. Neither would my kids. There wouldn’t even be the chance that we’d
have to paint walls in our lifetimes.
Gwyneth Paltrow can’t say that.
Hell, if I had an
extra seven thousand
dollars I wouldn’t
be painting my walls right now.
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