Where Has The Week Gone?

I woke up and realized today is Friday*, and that I have very little recollection of the week that has passed.

And there weren't even any fun party drinks involved. Sheesh.

The week started with what was supposed to be a quick home improvement project, but anyone who has tried to improve a home knows that there is no such thing. There are frustrating projects, there are rip-your-hair-out projects, there are let's-just-burn-the-whole-place-down-and-start-over projects, but quick projects are an urban legend.

Rob and I have been wanting to paint the hall bathroom, also known as the Lair of Dirty Children, for years, mostly just to distract ourselves from the alarmingly fleshy color of the counter tops. They are seriously peachy. And marbled. And, in the words of Gollom, we hates them! hates them!

We will be replacing the counter tops some day, but until that some day arrives (probably sometime after all the children have graduated and we no longer need a "kids" bathroom) we wanted to look at something other than flat white paint and dirty hand smudges on the walls.

Rob diligently taped and then we took turns priming since we still had to, you know, parent the children and all. They get cranky when lunch doesn't appear promptly by noon. By the time we were ready to get the painting party started, it was nearly six o'clock at night. We were still hoping that we could really knock it out once the kids were in bed and we could double team the painting.

I know, I know. You would think that this was our first HIP, what with all the optimism floating around. You would think that the lessons of the eleventy jillion other projects that took three times as long as we estimated would have sunk in by now. Heh.

I was herding cats getting the kids ready for bed, when Rob called me to the bathroom. I don't care what you're doing or who you are, that's never a good sign.

Does this paint look right to you? It's really thin.

How thin?

I don't know. Really thin. Thin thin. Like watercolor thin.

It can't be that thin. Why would it be that thin?

I don't know, but it is just running down the wall.

Did you mix it?

Nope. Didn't mix it at all. Not one little stir. Of course I mixed it!

Let me see. Wow. That's thin.

I think I heard that somewhere before.


And on and on we went until we discovered that the other can of paint was normal and thick and that the first can was a dud. Rob decided to take it back and get a new can of paint, even though we were now pushing seven o'clock and there was no paint on the walls.

He called me from the big box home improvement store that rhymes with KNOWS. As in, "who KNOWS if you will be able to find anyone who can provide an ounce of customer service?"
Rob sure didn't.

They refused to replace the can of paint because it was a custom color, even though he opened the can and showed them the colored water contained therein. The paint chief was called in and the manager was called in and they all insisted that "that was how paint was supposed to look". If you were doing an impressionist watercolor maybe.

Seeing he would get no satisfaction, my unfailingly polite husband pushed the can across the desk and calmly told them that they could dispose of it since it was of no use to him. They are so lucky I was not there because someone may have ended up wearing Apple Green #4.

Long story long, we managed to finish painting the first coat that night, and I kept going back to it through the week, touching up here and there while the big kids were at school and the little kids napped.

I'm still not finished, since we have to put up the towel hooks and the obligatory framed pictures of a bathtub and toilet. In case you forget where you are. Oh, I kid. I might as well just put up a picture of the bathroom floor for as many times as my kids have used that as the toilet.

What I don't have the energy or the heart to tell Rob is that I really think the paint is a little too yellow for the room and that maybe we should have gone one shade deeper.

I can't afford to have him stroke out before we have to paint the hallway above the stairs.


*And by the time I publish this, it very well may have morphed into Saturday already.