First of all, I’d like to make an observation. What is it about wet paint that is so enticing to winged insects? Are they all on a suicide mission or what? Just once, I’d like to paint something outside and not have to pick a bunch of dead bugs off the surface afterward. Today, I painted nearly every door in my house and I am dog tired. I promised the realtor we signed with that I would and I don’t like going back on my promises. We had ‘doors of every color’ and needed some consistency. There were white doors and stained doors as well as cream, yellow, turquoise, and gray doors. If I only had to paint the cream, yellow, turquoise, and gray doors, it wouldn’t have been such an undertaking. But I had to do the white ones also because they looked terrible (the paint had been applied with a roller previously and most of the surfaces were rough and uneven). Cue the paint sprayer!
Oh, wait! Before we get to the paint sprayer, I just need to make one more observation (aka a complaint). Who are these people that leave tape all over the damn doors? I’m not sure who’s responsible but whoever owned our house before us must have been ‘tape happy’. My God! I have never removed so much tape in my life! They must have lived here ‘pre-Post It’ and loved to hang signs all over the place (bedrooms, laundry room, kitchen, bathrooms, closets) because each time I’d prep a door in order to get it ready for paint, I inevitably had to remove &$(@%*!! tape. Grrr. Alright, now let me get back to the paint sprayer. After achieving poor/less than desirable results using a paint roller, we decided to purchase a sprayer. Oh my goodness, what a lifesaver! To be able to paint a door in under a minute? What a concept! The person who invented them should have been awarded the Nobel Prize!
Ok, maybe I’m getting a little carried away. They’re great but they’re not ‘that’ great. I found that out today when I took my brand new paint sprayer for a test drive. They’ve got a lot going for them, to be sure. They can make ‘quick’ work out of a big job. Seriously, they beat using a brush or a roller hands down! Or…do they? Yes, they’re fast and efficient but there’s much more to them than meets the eye. To start, ‘assembly is required’. With a brush or a roller, the process is pretty self explanatory. With a sprayer? Ha! You almost need to take a class!! The sprayer itself has multiple parts that serve different purposes. Had I read the instructions, I would have learned this, but my husband went ahead and assembled it for me so I could finish up prep work (filling holes, sanding, wiping down, taping). By the way, he was planning on spraying the doors until he put his back out (moving a silly concrete fountain for aesthetic purposes).
I have to tell you, my poor hubby is in so much pain! And I don’t know how we’re going to get everything done by Thursday. The photographer is coming out at 1:00 in the afternoon and the house is supposed to be ‘picture perfect’ so when the listing goes ‘live’ (the following day), potential buyers will be wowed and more likely to make a substantial offer. However, our house is far from ‘picture perfect’ at the moment. No, it is a rather, right mess! Not only are paint supplies everywhere, paint is everywhere! Yes, as nice as sprayers are, they have their drawbacks, ‘overspray’ being one of them. Today, I not only sprayed all of the doors that I intended to, I also ‘over sprayed’ our freshly painted fence, some of the stained doors, our clothes dryer, and nearly every surface in the powder room. “You’re getting paint everywhere!” my husband barked at my earlier today (while I was working on the final door in the laundry room).
The door was an exterior door and it opened into our laundry room, and I was determined to vanquish the turquoise once and for all. Once I had everything prepped (plastic hung to protect the walls and floor), I got to work. That fresh white paint really transformed the door, it looks like a million bucks! It also ‘transformed’ our clothes dryer. Don’t ask me how but that blasted paint found its way past the plastic and over to one of my large appliances. When I got done, I noticed little white dots sprinkled every-so-sweetly over the entire surface (including the control panel). Oh, yippee! Thank goodness I had the mindset to remove the clothes that had been there only moments before because it would have ruined them. Crap! I just double-checked the laundry room and realized that even though the clothes were spared, the window was not. It’s covered with little white dots that I get to remove with a razor tomorrow.
No problem, I have all the time in the world NOT! No, time is something I don’t currently have much of, considering that we’re listing our house in 4 days and there are still a gazillion things to do. Ack!! In fact, I wasted a ton of it today trying to ‘clean’ the paint sprayer when I was done using it. I did not read the instructions first, of course. That is something my husband does, whereas, I don’t. I like to ‘figure things out’ and give every excuse in the world not to have to read a manual. Even though that’s normally how I operate, I wish I had read the manual this time because I ended up spending nearly two hours cleaning the blasted sprayer and making much more out of it than it needed to be. And it’s not even ‘completely’ clean because despite multiple attempts, I could not remove the spray nozzle to save my life (although I was able to clean everything else thoroughly).
Everything I initially did was completely wrong. Had I read the instructions, I would not have wasted so much paint or made as big of a mess as I did. Remember how I mentioned getting paint all over the powder room? Well, let me give you a word of advice. If you ever use a paint sprayer and need to use a sink in order to ‘clean out the line’, don’t use a tiny bathroom sink. When you use a tiny bathroom sink, when you turn the sprayer on, anything shooting out of it will blow back onto you (and everything else in the vicinity). I learned the hard way that cleaning it outside using a 5-gallon bucket would have been a much better idea. Needless to say, after wiping down the mirror and walls and floor multiple times, I came up with the bright idea to spray directly into a wet towel (so the paint wouldn’t ricochet off the ceramic sink). By the way, I still have to clean the paint off the sink but it can wait until tomorrow. I’m exhausted.
Yes, I spent another fun-filled day working on the house and I know tomorrow will be more of the same. Some of it will entail painting over and/or cleaning the areas where I ‘over sprayed’. The rest of it will involve more painting (trim on three windows in master bedroom and inside of linen closet), caulking (hundreds of nail holes I never filled when my husband first installed all of the baseboard throughout the house), cleaning (sinks, counters, floors, walls, toilets), decluttering (why is there still so much crap everywhere?), vacuuming and shampooing (carpet in our bedroom where our dirt-loving dog loves to lay), filling (depressions in yard where trees once were with concrete chunks and gravel), sweeping and mopping (all of the hardwood and linoleum floors), raking (all of the blasted needles and pinecones that keep dropping into our yard from our neighbor’s dead tree that he has yet to cut down), and wiping (down the walls and glass surfaces where the dog brushes up against or feels inclined to place her snout).
Help?! The list I just provided is ‘just a glimpse’. I just remembered the mulch we need to spread, all of the stuff I need to haul off to the thrift store, cleaning out the gutters, sweeping all of the cobwebs off the outside (and inside) of the house, and the windows! Ack!! The outside of our windows are filthy! Ok, I just have one more observation to make and then I’m out of here. It’s already after two and I still need to clean the kitchen, take a shower, and have my snack before I climb into bed. Alright, I’d better cut to the chase because time’s a wastin’. My observation? I just want to know what the hell was I thinking?!! Getting this house ready is a big job and I think we might have bitten off more than we can chew. I got caught up in this ‘moving frenzy’ and I feel like I’m on a runaway train that’s about to jump the tracks! I just hope we’re doing the right thing. Once we accept a contract, unless the buyer backs out, there’s no turning back. Sigh. It better all be worth it or I’m going to kick myself until the day I’m incinerated, placed in a box, and put in the back of someone’s closet.
Alright, gotta go! Enjoy the rest of your week!!
My entire family is insane. 