A PAINTING WE WILL GO

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I need to save my money. I need to sock it all away and put it in some ridiculously high paying investment so that I become rich beyond my wildest imagination.

I say this because it is at that point where I can afford to hire a painter, and will never, ever, ever, ever have to paint a room again.

In case you can’t tell, I just finished painting a room in my house. One room. A small one. To me, painting is about as pleasurable as spending a hot summer afternoon duct taped under Louie Anderson’s armpit.

It all started a few months ago, when we were at about the five-month mark of my wife’s pregnancy. It is about that time that a woman’s body begins to produce hormones that make her hate every single color of paint in a house, colors that for years were perfectly acceptable.

So, at that point, my wife began telling me how we absolutely, positively had to paint the baby’s room despite the fact that (a) the room was already painted so far as I could tell and (b) the baby wasn’t going to need a room for several more months. Day in and day out I heard it. "We need to paint the baby’s room. We need to paint the baby’s room. By we I mean you. We need to paint the baby’s room. We need to paint the baby’s room."

After a few months, I caved. I even agreed to go to the store with my wife and shop for colors of paint. We went to the store and began reviewing all of the different colors, which all had names like Divine, Airy Delight, and Fairy Dust. Eventually, my wife found one that she liked: Forever Violet. Now, you’d think that would be, oh, I don’t know, violet, right? Well, it’s not. It’s white. White white white. Call it what you will, but it’s white. (My wife insists it’s "sort of an off-white, maybe an eggshell." I still say white is white. Either way, there ain’t no violet.)

We gathered up all of the painting supplies that I would need (paint, rollers, drop cloth, 12-pack) and headed home. It was at this point where my wife’s keen instinct kicked in. "Well," she said, "I’m heading over to your folks." Better to leave me alone, lest the baby learn some inappropriate words while in utero.

With the room all cleared out, I dove in headfirst. (I’m still trying to get the Forever Violet out of my hair.) I began to paint one of the walls when I had the following revelation: I am a terrible painter. I mean, you’d think it would be easy to paint a white wall white. But even that I somehow messed up. The streaks of the roller were kind of crooked, the paint seemed to be globbing up in certain places, and I somehow managed to get paint underneath the dropcloth. I am to painting what Robert Downey Jr. is to self control.

After showing my lack of painting prowess on the walls, I moved to the baseboards, which were painted blue. My wife decided that the blue boards would now be white, so I opened up a smaller can of different white paint. I began to scoot along on the floor, delicately brushing the white paint along the boards, careful not to get more paint than necessary on the carpet. When I made it all the way around, having completed the baseboard circuit, I turned back to reflect on my work. Apparently, the blue paint that had been previously applied was the color known as Super Blue, Impervious to All Other Paint. Where I swear I had just painted the baseboards white, they all still appeared Super Blue. It was like I had used disappearing paint.

I called my wife to share my exasperation with her. I told her that the walls looked terrible, the baseboards were still blue, and I was about 80% covered in paint. "Oh, honey, don’t worry. It always looks like that after the first coat. It should look fine after the third coat."

I’m not totally positive of what I said next, but I am pretty sure it contained the phrase "three coats?!?!?!" in it somewhere.

Over the next few hours, I managed to apply the additional coats. To my wife’s credit, she was right. It did actually start to shape up as not-half-bad. I mean, it’s not a Da Vinci, but it also doesn’t look like it was painted by dipping an octopus in paint and hurling it at the wall. As we slowly put the nursery together, I can see it taking shape, and see that the paint job does provide some improvement. I know it will be a while until my child can appreciate her room, but I will say this: her first words had better be "nice paint job."