Since I am officially jobless, it is reasonable that I volunteer to repaint the baseboards the antique-white I should have used during our unfortunate blue period. But if the baseboards are clean and fresh, won’t that make the hallway doors look dingy? It just won’t do to have it done halfway, right? But, unlike baseboards, doors are (mostly) at eye level, and my skill level with the brush doesn’t guarantee a smooth, drip-free surface. Not that guests wobbling to the bathroom after a few glasses of wine would be inclined to examine the door, but you know, details matter.
Negotiations commenced with each other and a professional painter. We all settled on a reduced daily rate if I would do the prep work and all the real painter had to do was the fun stuff. So for a week leading up to painting day I sanded baseboards, doors, and frames. Now you’ve all seen those Do-It-Yourself shows on HGTV--the ones where Paige or whatever her name is paints and nails and installs vinyl flooring while wearing heels and dangly earrings? I wish.
Sanding paint makes dust. Lots of fine, fine dust. The dust gets in your eyes, covers your clothes, and coats those little hairs in your nose until you look like some crazy abominable snowman. You don’t wear cute shoes or earrings or makeup and maybe you don’t even shower first. It is very unattractive work. Vacuuming doesn’t get all the dust, and forget the Swiffer, which just sends it flying into the air. And once you start sanding, where do you stop? The hallway has a door leading into the foyer, where there are stairs, and a banister, and another door into the dining room where the window sill has dog scratches, and painting that area will make the living room look bad which leads to the sunroom and the kitchen and finally back to the hallway. It’s like that kids’ book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. It just never ends, and we are only talking about the downstairs. If I were an even more compulsive person than I am, I might calculate the quantity of linear feet of board involved in this process, but right now I’m too tired for that.
All of this is before even one drop of paint has touched the wood. On day one our hired professional spends half of it prepping my prep work. I’ve left too much dust everywhere, and all the door handles are still on. He brings in drop cloths and masking tape. When he finally starts painting, the work is beautiful but awfully slow to my meter-is-running mind. By evening, all he has finished are the hallway doors, and it is clear that accomplishing this task will either take a full week of (paid) painting or I’m going to have to pick up a brush. I mentally run the tab and go in search of painting clothes.
With a worried look, the painter fills up my plastic paint bucket and I go to work. I am not good at this, and I end up with dribbles of paint on the floor tile because I didn’t stick the blue masking tape close enough to the wood. I get some Q-tips and the oderless mineral spirits, which is not odorless by the way, and try to clean up the spills. It doesn’t really work but breathing the mineral spirits makes me feel a little better and I move on to the next area. I keep going until my plastic bucket is empty, by which time I have almost as much paint on me as I’ve applied to the wood. One particularly telling mark is the door-frame-shaped stripe running diagonally across my butt.
By day two I’ve abandoned all expectation of pristine results. No more Q-tips and mineral spirits--I’ve got to move ahead here. A little dirt in the corner? The paint will cover that up, and who’s going to look down there anyway? A drip on the tile? It’s behind the sofa. You know how when your first kid drops the pacifier you scald it before putting it back in his mouth, but by the time the second kid comes along you sort of look at the dropped pacifier to make sure there aren’t any bugs on it, then wipe it on your jeans and plug it back in? Same thing here.
Day three, and our real-painter budget is exhausted, so anything else that gets whitewashed is up to me. My back and knees are killing me and Ted tells me not to paint anymore until the weekend, when he can help. "Just write today," he says. Good idea. And since all this painting has given me man hands, I’ll get a manicure. A professional one, at the salon where you get to pick from all those colors on the shelf. A cool blue sounds perfect. Trust me, it’ll look great.
