Friday, April 01, 2005

I'm a FOOL, a Painting Fool

One of the ladies at our church offered to take the kids off my hands once a week while Bill's gone. I didn't have that luxury while he was home but you can bet that I'm smart enough not to pass up that offer. Usually she and her son come to my house and I go off to do some errands or browse the bookstore or some other task that's usually impossible with the presense of little people. On Wednesday, I dropped the kids off at her place. The possibilities were endless. Three whole hours to do whatever I pleased. A nap? A bath? Read something longer than half a paragraph in a magazine? No. I painted the entryway to our house. Complete glamour. It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint does for your living quarters. Hmmm, this paint sure is a lot whiter than I remember. Paint dries darker than it goes on, right? It doesn't look like it's going to darken up much. This IS the paint for the entryway....right? Where's the rest of the paint we bought? I checked all over the garage with all the other paint supplies. This was the only can of Behr that I saw. Weird. Now if I were Bill, where would I have put this stuff? Uh oh. Hey, look at that. It's in the laundry room. Of COURSE! It makes perfect sense to store your paint in the laundry room instead of in the garage with the rollers, pans, drop cloths and brushes. *Sigh* There's the correct white paint that I needed. I'd painted the entryway Ultra Brite White. The high gloss white we used to paint the table and chair set that Trey got for his birthday. Well, at least I didn't use red or blue or some other dark shade and I was able to correct it immediately. Did you know that painting causes you to notice all the other flaws on the rest of the walls in the house and if you're like me you want to fix them NOW? I took my little brush and went all around the hallway, up the stairs and into the hallway on the second floor to correct all of the neglected spots. It looked great!...until I looked at it from a different angle. The Behr paint we purchased had a low gloss on it. The original paint sprayed on by the builders is flat. Man. Why do home projects always turn out to be bigger than intended and way more work than what HGTV shows? Now I have shiny spots on the walls. At least it's not the dirty looking marks that sat there before, right? Right? Oh, come on! I'll fix it when I have another free day, or at least by the time the kids are in school.

1 comment:

Judy said...

Oh my GOODNESS I have so been there in your painting frenzy! Our last house, I wanted to touch up before the realtor started showing it to others, so I rushed out to get a fresh gallon of paint and ran around the house, dotting here and swishing there...only to find that our walls were semi-gloss and this was FLAT. OUCH! Ended up having to repaint the ENTIRE house in a weekend...very not fun.

You sound a lot like me - I just finished painting my son's room, bathroom and my bathroom, and now I'm trying to find my "perfect" neutral shade. I like my master bath color, but it is too dark for the rest of the house (like creamed coffee), so I'm diluting it with white to find my perfect shade, then I'll run it over to Home Depot to get the color matched.

I know, more than you wanted to know from someone passing through, but I came across your site a couple of days ago and have you bookmarked...you are a terrific writer!

Hope you get your painting done soon so you can enjoy your moments "off duty"!