After about the third day of painting I was sure my arms were going to fall off my body.
I was starting to think painting my bedroom and bathroom was not a good idea for vacation plans.
I would lift my arms and a pain would shoot through my shoulder and I just didn’t want to roll on paint any more. A nice, sandy beach in the sun somewhere was looking pretty good – too bad I can’t afford to go anywhere.
I’m not the most athletic person and my job consists of sitting at a desk all day. So after three days I was thinking to myself that if it didn’t end soon I didn’t care if only half the wall was painted.
On the fourth day I tackled the bathroom. I had to spackle over a defect in the ceiling where some of the old paint had cracked and chipped away. This meant I not only had to paint the walls but the ceiling as well.
As I started to roll paint on – and hit my head on the ceiling – I was cursing for not being able to let that ceiling defect go. I kept hitting my head into the newly painted ceiling and my hair was caked with paint by the time I was through. I hoped it all came out.
The bathroom used to look like a dark, small hole, but with a fresh coat of marshmallow white it looks a lot bigger.
The process of painting just two rooms took far too long. One of the reasons was the multiple nail holes in every wall. I’m not sure what the person did to the condo before I moved in.
It looks like there were as many things hanging on the wall as the Louvre, but maybe that is just my imagination getting the best of me. I know they never patched their walls.
Or they just had a series of renters that put everything under the sun on the walls.
Anyway, it took me quite a while to patch the walls. A job, I’m sure, hadn’t been done in years to the place. It’s a time consuming process, but as a first time homebuyer, I decided to make the extra effort.
The walls were also a horrible tan colour that sucked up every ounce of light in the place. It made the place look small and to brighten it up, a nice slather of marshmallow white was applied to the walls. Yes, it’s white, but white is a great colour for small rooms. For the den I went with a nice light blue. It’s one of my favourite hangouts in the place.
For about two weeks before the project my house was in chaos. I had to go around an obstacle course of furniture. It was the result of me taking every piece of furniture out of the bedroom and bathroom in preparation of painting.
I started painting the bedroom and then got sick. For about two weeks I had a half-painted room taken up by a ladder and the painting supplies.
It doesn’t make for a nice morning routine. You have to move around the items just to get ready in the morning. And when you come back and want to relax in the house, it can make you a little bit grumpy because you are living in a mess.
I hate having an overly cluttered house. A little mess is OK. A few papers scattered around or a project you are working on is fine. A mess that is just a mess is a different story.
But, there is nothing quite like painting a home that belongs to you. Once it’s all done, sitting back in a nice big chair and looking at the results of your labour is a satisfying feeling.
