Chaos

And yes, that lovely old window you see overlooks the ocean.

It's all very well to cruise around and plot colours and pick out lovely paints, make decisions on matte or semi or gloss but HELL. My painter is wonderful, one of those self-deprecating geniuses. And so far 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and 1 upper inner hallway are completed. By completed I mean: primer, ceilings, wainscoting and trim have all been meticulously applied, but to do all that he had to move stuff around. And hereby the chaos. He had a personal commitment for the weekend so wrapped up here Friday afternoon. He'll be back again on Monday morning first thing, to correct any small defects I might spot (none that I see) and then he'll tackle the upper outer hall and the lower main hall ceilings, on down to the living room and my office and back hall.

You might think I have a vast mansion of a place with all these halls but you'd be mistaken. The reason for the halls was to conserve heating in the winter in the good old days (and even now the freezing new days). So my little rabbit warren of a house has 4 halls and 5 tiny bedrooms with NO closets.

I sometimes wondered why I invested time and money into this place. And then I see the freshly painted rooms and I think - this is lovely, so badly needed and maybe, just maybe, these freshly decorated walls will extend beyond my lifespan and I won't have to do them again.

Meanwhile, I will trudge upstairs once again and survey the enormous amount of bits and pieces, scattered everywhere and question my own sanity: do I truly need all this stuff? And get ruthless, absolutely ruthless. Hear me, universe?

And this coming from a woman who discarded/recycled/donated 10 items per day for the last 50 odd days?

And felt so effing virtuous.

Unusual

I have this new painter. Highly recommended. He's working on the inside of the house. The outside was done last year and I've squeezed out a few dollars for the inside this year. gone are the days when I'd do it all myself but younger and more agile than me have fallen off ladders or slipped a disk, or....but I just may tackle the craft room. There's something awfully satisfying about slapping on paint and fine tuning the trim, you know?

Well this painter, we're filing down the stairs and he says:

"Oh, I'm illiterate, missus."

"Oh," sez I, "How do you manage painting, the colours 'n all?"

"You'll have to put the cans into each room for me."

"How can you tell the different whites, like primer, trim, ceiling?"

"If you put a big letter on each, like P for primer, it'll be proper ting."

He's around 60+. We haven't got into the educational ins and outs of this but I imagine he fell through the cracks many years ago.

What I admired most was the practical way he stated this fact about his illiteracy.

And also when I suggested drop cloths, he said he never saw the need for them, he knew what he was doing and didn't splash around, no drips in his work, ask anybody. Pride, missus.

OK then.

I've had one awful experience with an inside painter.

Let's hope this one restores my faith.

PS - posted later - here was the followup post to my "Bristled" post above - this one is "Banjaxed" - have a larf.

Banjaxed

This is a follow-up to my previous post.

It is the anniversary of just about three weeks of Rosie painting two rooms. She is going to ‘finish it off’ today: correct all the wavering lines, fill in the missed spots, overpaint the occasional splashes of unwanted colour.

“This is just too complicated”, she barges into my office after a couple of hours, paintbrush dripping, her lips quivering.

“Yes, I think it is,” I agree, “Why don’t you stop?”

I survey the scene of streaky hell, red splashes on the white ceiling, inadequate butterscotch colour on the upper walls, hit or miss signal red on the lower walls, outreaching randomly, longingly, at the yellow in occasional areas. Haphazard spots of all colours on the polished wooden floor, door jambs a wild palette of all the colours. One door completely missed, displaying layers of past paint jobs, a whole history of the house encapsulated on its shabby panels.

I want to cry. I want to throw things. I want my mother. I want some grown-up to come and take care of both of us for I can tell she’s close to tears too.

It’s a small village. Her older sister chooses this very moment to barge right in on top of us, her toothless smile beaming ahead of her.

“I’m here to see the decorating!” she announces brightly.

“I’m not ready!” I say, “Now is not a good time!”

“Oh, don’t be silly!” she says, “Anytime is a good time!”

And you can guess what happens next. My full wrath gets turned on the visitor.

“It’s my house,” I say with a really nasty edge to my voice, “ And I’m saying to you, right now, that this is not a good time. Please leave!”

“Oh, be like that,” she says, “Someone definitely got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning!”

Bristled

Living in an outport at the edge of the earth has some downsides. I often write of the upsides, the people, the sense of community, the peace, the beauty, the sea, the trees, the beaches.

But there are downsides. Since I am living way out over there adrift in mid-Atlantic, it is extremely difficult to get good handiwork, impossible to get deliveries of merchandise and in spite of loud activism on my part, we still have the dial-up doldrums to contend with in an age of high tech entrepreneurial businesses desperately needing broadband.

The latest on my downside of life here is a painting project I’ve started in the interior of the house. My cleaner told me she was a great painter and thrilled, I chose the colours. It took me a while, would I be brave on the palette, wouldn’t I, waffle, waffle and finally the plunge, let’s go all Frida Kahlo here. I’ve been in her house in Mexico City and loved the colours. The old Newfoundland colours have been reborn here by a paint company. They are incredibly clear and crisp. Kahlo-ish. So that’s what I did. I chose some strong, sunny colours. The hardest part of the job over, I thought.

Wrong.

I was assured by my painter at the start that drop cloths, tools, moving of objects would all be taken care of. I wasn’t to worry about a thing. When people say that to me I always worry. Why do they say it? I think they’re assuring themselves. Based on past history, perhaps.

Last Tuesday was the start of the job. Just two rooms for now. The kitchen/dining room and the living room. There were nails to be pulled and holes to be patched and sanded. This created an incredible layer of white dust over everything including all the open shelves in the kitchen, all through my knitting baskets and sewing boxes. An auspicious beginning, sans dropcloths. But I remained positive as I retreated to my room.

My office, my den, my inner sanctum has remained untouched at my insistence and I stay there, listening to a loud wailing from way out back in her work area.

Her groans and moans could come from the very heart of Hades itself. Her chorus involves the walls - oh, so crooked, oh, not made of the right kind of wood, oh, not taking the colour well. Next verse tells me her neck is all out of whack from looking up at the ceiling. I try not to get nervous.

“Are you okay?” I shout above the din.

“Best kind, honey,” comes the response and silence reigns for five minutes until she starts up again with the caterwauling.


So finally, after about an hour, I go out and inspect the painting and notice there is only one working tool, one tiny paintbrush and not a whiff of masking tape anywhere in sight.

WTF, I think.

“Hey,” I say, friendly-like, “Don’t you have rollers and tape and bigger brushes?”

“Well no,” she says, suspicious-like, “I only always work with this here one brush.”

“Doesn’t it like, take forever?”

“I has to do a good job, right? This here brush does a good job.”

I survey the streaks all over the walls, the crooked line at the top of the wainscoting.

I adjust my face to reflect a modicum of disappointment rather than homicidal intent. I do not trust myself to speak.

“Oh,” she says brightly, “This is only the first coat.”