It's About Time

I'm taking two days off this weekend to concentrate on a project here at home.  We moved here almost five years ago and I am finally getting around to painting the master bedroom.  Oh, the walls are painted  ...it's just that they are not a particularly attractive color.  Neither of us like them and I bought the paint to re-do the room the second year we were here.  But, well ...life gets in the way sometimes.  So now, almost five years after we moved here and almost four years after the new paint was purchased, I'm finally going to 'get 'er done.' 

There was a time that I could paint an average sized room in about half a day.  Barring cathedral ceilings or intricate wood trim molding, I was really quick and fairly tidy.  Knock on wood, I've never had an all out paint catastrophe ...like knocking a gallon bucket over or anything.  But I've had the occasional drips and spatters and oops's that just go with the territory.  I always keep a dampened old terry washcloth handy, and clean up any accidents immediately ...damage control.   Yet in spite of tying my hair back and wearing old rag-bag clothes ...I usually end up with quite a bit of paint on my person.  But that only further justifies the long hot shower after the job is done, right?  As long as the floors and furnishings are unscathed, I'm happy.  

I haven't painted a room in a long time.  I painted our kitchen the year after we moved here, but it's more of a small hallway than a room ...not very big at all.  I painted two big rooms at our last house and it took me almost ten days.  That was about three times longer than I had been expecting.  Yeoldfurt was out of town for two weeks at the time and I remember thinking it was a good thing I started right after he left because after the painting was done, I still had three or four days to recuperate before he got home. 

The rooms I'm painting this time are not large and there are no vaulted ceilings, but there are other hindrances.  The master bath has custom pine cabinets in a light honey finish.  Even a few specks of paint will stand out like a neon sign.  There's an alcove outside the bathroom with a vanity in the same pine cabinetry and a walk-in closet.  A bathroom door, a closet door and a fancy vanity to paint around in an area that's probably six to seven feet square. My edging will have to be razor straight where the wall meets the wood or, again ...it will be a neon sign flashing 'ROOKIE PAINTER WAS HERE.'  I know I'm not as fast as I used to be and I'm pretty sure I'm not as steady as I used to be, so I'm tackling that bathroom and vanity area first ...while I'm fresh. 

I'm starting at 7:00am tomorrow.  If I can get one coat on the bathroom and the whole vanity area edged by mid-afternoon tomorrow,  I'll be happy.  I'll take a break for an hour and get supper lined out before Yeoldfurt gets home.  I'll paint for another hour or two tomorrow night too and hope to have the bathroom and vanity completely done before we call it a night.

In my younger years, I used to just attack a painting project.  I usually covered the big areas first, then went back and edged.  Now that I'm older and slower and wear out quicker, I'm changing my strategy.   I'm kind of like those cordless tools that are so handy for the quick and dirty jobs.  I put the battery in my cordless drill and the minute I press the trigger, that battery begins to drain.  It may be good for a couple dozen screws before the torque and speed start to be noticeably less.  But once it's noticeable, it will be downhill from there.  My energy is that way these days too.  I used to be able to go all day for days on end.  Now I am good for an hour maybe two ...depending on how much 'torque' and 'speed' is attempted ...and then I need to recharge.  So, my strategy now it to tackle the intricate, time consuming tasks like edging first thing and save the easier stuff for last when I'm at the one foot in front of the other stage of the game. 

The bathroom and vanity area comprise less than a fourth of the entire space to be painted, but with the cabinets and tight spaces to be maneuvered, I'm figuring a full day to get them painted.  The second day, I will begin by edging and trimming the bedroom.  There are only two windows, another closet and the bedroom door to be taped and edged around in that room ...and the baseboards, of course.  Because I'm so much slower than I used to be and get slower as the day wears on, I figure the taping and trimming and edging in the bedroom will take half of the second day.  If I'm right about that, I'll try to get one wall ...probably the smallest wall ...painted before I stop to make supper Friday night.  My sister is driving up Friday night to spend the weekend with us, but won't be here until about 9:00pm.  By then I'll be done painting for the day but she will help me finish the rest of the painting Saturday.  Since all the tedious edging and trimming will be done before Saturday, I'll let her start on the bedroom walls and I'll try to get a second coat on the walls in the bathroom.  The second coat should go faster because I won't have to edge anything. When I'm done, I can help her finish in the bedroom.  We're a good team and just having company makes the work go faster.  Sunday we will have the fun job of getting all the furniture set back up.

That really IS the fun part for us female types.  Men don't seem to care about rearranging furniture, at least not just for the sake or rearranging.  Cats definitely don't like it.  The one cat we have in the house is beside herself at the moment because we moved our mattress out to the living room last night in preparation for this painting project.  We are 'camping' (sleeping) in the living room until the room is put back together.  This cat is a little neurotic anyway.  She absolutely adores me and finally, after 12 years, has decided Yeoldfurt is okay too.  But she likes us to stick to a routine and not MOVE anything.  If we stay up past our usual bedtime, she sits in the hallway and lets out pitiful yowls to tell us we're keeping her up too late.  If one of us goes to bed and the other stays up, she wanders back and forth between us uttering the same pitiful protests until we are both in bed for the night.  Well, when we wrangled the mattress out to the living room last night, she was wide eyed and anxious.  When we actually laid down on the mattress and settled in for the night, she was beside herself.  By the time the painting is done, she'll have gotten used to the mattress in the living room ...and then we'll put it back in the bedroom.  She'll be traumatized all over again.  I don't dare tell her I'm planning to rearrange the dressers in the room when we put it back together.  Poor kitty ....