Monotony

One of the things that one does when one moves into a new-to-them house is paint the walls. Not only does this make the place look cleaner and fresher but it also makes the house feel more like home.

Right?

Right. So a couple of weekends ago, the girls and I hit the paint chips at Menards, gathering all colors and shades so we could go home and compare them to our carpets and our countertops to see what would work best to make our house our own.

I imagined a cozy living room, a sedate, restful bedroom, an energetic, sunny kitchen.

Alyssa pictured a cave.

Her favorite color was a dark navy blue.

I vetoed that for the living room with the brown carpet. She was devastated. My choice of a lovely warm beige didn’t ease her distress.

So this past Saturday we picked up the paint and started on the walls in the living room and kitchen.

But let me confess that I hate painting. I knew before we started that I hate it. I hate the tedious job of taping off the corners and trim. The monotony of rolling paint onto the walls drives me crazy. And it takes so long!

But away we went. And yes, I had ‘help’ in the way of a seven year old armed with a paint roller.

Thankfully, we had old sheets laying on the floor to catch the splatters, of which I was as guilty if not more than Alyssa.

We painted for three hours before Olivia, who’d previously been playing quietly at our feet, staged a coup and demanded a roller of her own. This is the child I don’t trust with Crayola Washable markers for fear she’ll turn herself blue. I was NOT giving her a paint roller and letting her go wild with beige acrylic wall paint.

So we stopped, I cleaned up, which is another act of tedious monotony. I don’t care how long you rinse those damned rollers, the paint NEVER comes out completely. Then I made dinner and put both girls in the tub, where they soaked away the aches of painting four walls.

Soon after bath, my mom arrived to liberate us from the paint fumes. I almost cried when she said, “It looks nice. I like the color. The rooms will look great after you get a second coat on them.”

The next day…it all started again.

Except this time, I didn’t have ‘help.’ I told Alyssa that the room I was working on didn’t have any open spaces for her to help. It was the kitchen, which meant a lot of climbing up the step ladder for me.

Every so often, Alyssa would come in and say, “Painting is fun. I like painting, I wish I were painting. Do you like painting?”

And I’d reply, “No! I am not having fun.”

I’m a brat.

But five hours later, the kitchen, hall and entry way were done.

I decided that after climbing and stooping for that long, the girls and I needed to go for a walk just to shake off the stiffness that threatened. We walked 3.3 miles to my mom’s.

The rooms do look better. When I walk in the front door, I really like how clean and new it looks.

But…was the end result worth the effort? I’m not so sure since I still have to put on that freaking second coat. And the thought of having to prime and then paint the upstairs hall and bathrooms makes me want to cry. Some previous owner evidently thought that sponge painting was all the rage because there is royal blue sponge painting all over the upstairs hall and pink/gray sponge painting in both bathrooms. It’s awful. Yet…maybe we can live with it for a few months?

Maybe not. Honestly, I wish I had the kind of money it would take to pay someone else to come and paint my house. The end result is lovely but the work involved is just so boring.

I wish I could say that my creative side comes out and enjoys the act of making a loving living space for my family. Except…painting walls beige doesn’t feel creative to me.

And yet, we all do what we must and in the end, Alyssa had fun and that was a nice side benefit to the act of painting walls.