Paint Storm

Painting the house – which is always better than burning it down like the song.

It started with a serious well overdue need to repaint the kitchen white. Hide the bits where bat droppings have leaked down the walls, ancient cobwebs have fossilised onto plaster and just generally too much dust in the rough surface. It’s been too long – how did that happen. Ok off to town to invest in some lovely white velveglo. Start the process. And while you are at it, let’s paint out that ancient corkboard we inherited when we moved in. Great idea... lick, slap, splodge.

Have you noticed that if you repaint one room, all the others start to look shockingly shabby too?

The windows on the stoep (veranda) for instance. Putty had been replaced in places, left to harden, and then just left to crack. Buy some nice fresh summer green paint. Tape up the edges – do it properly. And off we go.

I am a very messy painter. I’d forgotten just how bad. Soon, skin, clothes, hair, floor and windows need constant attention. Tarrah. Whisk off the masking tape and … oh dear… quite a lot of paint found its way underneath so windows now have frilly painted edges like an elaborate doily. Hmm, disappointed but if I leave my glasses off it doesn’t look too bad and hey! It matches the cushions. And look how it brings out the other colours.

Right - now the main bedroom. The once white walls are now faded to a slightly yellowed white. Lashings of velveglo and Turrah! again… now the box-wood-packing-crate ceiling must go….No more that strange distorted face in the wood grain to look up at! Body is aching now. But it all looks good and so LIGHT – a person could get snow blindness on a sunny day!

Turn around and – oh yes the bathrooms. Too much green paint now everywhere. Blue is the answer. Buy blue paint inspired by colours seen on a trip to India a few years ago. I remember a bathroom that was swamped in blue – walls, floor, and ceiling. Going to the loo there was like a meditation session or being submerged in a dolphinarium – without the dolphins.

Ok I won’t go that far, but the cupboards door windows – yes! Wow this blue is much brighter than I planned. Quite a few times I think I have finished, mop up all the splotches, put brushes in water, pack away. Look again and …uhoh missed a bit.
Bring paint back, fix. Put away. Another missed bit. Did that quite a few times. Now the blue is shimmering and blasting its presence into the smallest rooms.
I am trying not to look at the white bits of walls……….. Or the office…….or anything that looks like it might be improved by paint. I have quite a bit left over so this is not a safe house to stand still in at the moment.

Oh yes and the monkeys have fled the overwhelming miasma of paint fumes … he he