house painting

Homeowner’s Guide to Finding Your Inner Zen: The Point of No Return

okay guys, decision time.

Dilemma:? I currently have a 2 car garage in mediocre condition.? As in, ever since it got “fixed”, kinda like the leaning tower of Pisa.? Not bad bad, but not great — and really eventually needs to be repaired.*

Repair Guy said the garage design itself was flawed — as in, the garage only has 3 walls, instead of 3 plus a piece called a “return” (e.g. the thing next to the door that apparently you have, that I don’t).? On mine, the doors go all the way to the corners of the garage.? So when it started to lean, as garages sometimes do, there is really kinda nothing to hold it together, except for the roof.? (Ironically, the roof is the only part of the garage I built myself :} )

door number 2 (yes, I will finish painting it soon, I swear)

Soooo, Repair Guy said he can take out both garage doors, “straightenerup”, add a little return on each side, and stick one massive 16 foot door in the middle. For $2400, that is.**

But, I say to myself, the other side of the garage is just used to store crap like the lawnmower and yard tools… Do I really *need* a huge door?

So I ask Repair Guy what it would cost to just leave one regular garage door, and wall the sucker in with just a little “people” door?? He looked at me with that astonished look that repair guys get when someone else just came up with a good idea… wow, THEN it’d be sturdy!? (he whistles.) I’m never sure if whistling is a good thing or bad, so I shove my hands in my pockets, stick out my gut, and whistle with him.? Soooo, I nudge him… what would that cost?? $1500.? For everything?? Yeah, everything. Everything… *plus* labor? or… everything everything?? Everything.

I whistle.

Now, I’m sure that somewhere down the line someone will tell me how it would Improve My Home Value to have a “2-car garage” vs. a “2-car, 1-door garage”.? And that my house price will dramaticallydecrease or something if I do this.***? But right now, as I’m saving furiously for my impending “job change”, that extra thousand dollars is kind of important.? And though I totally believe in fixing things right and taking care of my home, somehow putting that extra money to fix a crappy garage doesn’t feel right.? Maybe it’s the “fix” + “crappy” + “garage” parts.? I mean, the garage isn’t going to get any less crappy if I do this; it will merely maintain its current state of crappiness.

Sooo… I’m going to do what anyone would do in my situation: I’m going to ask my Dad.

……………………….C.

* and by “eventually”, I mean “now”.

** discounted because I offer him coffee occasionally and let him blather on about politics and hunting.

*** for those of you not in the know, this pesky little “recession” thing pretty much took care of my home “value”.

p.s. Lest you think everything about my house is crappy, behold the New Blue Paint Job:

Blue is the new black (a.k.a. my house is better than my neighbor's)(finally)

BurlyGirlyMan and the Testosterone Tune-Out

So today was a big day.? Not THE Big Day, as in the one where an actual project is finished, (in this case, house paint color is applied,) but one of the many preliminary Milestones of Homeownership which must be celebrated to keep one from going insanely crazy at the total workload of it all.

This Milestone involves spraying the entire 3-story Little House with blinding white primer.? This serves not only to notify your neighbors of your impending progress, but also to warn them of what they might be stuck with should they distract you from said progress by blaring their car stereos late at night.? The Primer Milestone is also important because it is the first time that the house has ever been dealt with, in a single day, in its entirety.? For those who can’t truly fathom what this means, try doing anything to every square inch of your house in one day.

So this Milestone involves renting a paint sprayer from the Big HD.? (Luckily I live .4 miles from the Big Hd, which I highly recommend should you choose to purchase your own bit of Zen someday.)? SuperMan & I drive to the tool rental and pick out a sprayer and prepare to fork over the $65.? Notsofast, says the BurlyMan.? He proceeds to explain every switch, no matter how mundane.? (Yes, I have operated an “on/off” switch before.? I actually have several lighting fixtures in my house; I’ll be sure to put it on my resume.)? Now, I know this is important, albeit boring.? So I pay attention.? Sortof.? I look like I’m paying attention, which is what’s really important.? What I’m actually doing is practicing the fine art of Testosterone Tune-Out.? It’s an innate skill, passed down through the females of the species.? It is a necessary survival instinct in the Hardware Store Environment.

It is not practiced by the males of the species, however.

SuperMan cuts BurlyMan short and says “yeah yeah, we’ve used one before.? Push this button, flip this switch.? We got it.? Can we go?”? BurlyMan is not swayed.? He launches into Part Two, Be Sure To Clean Your Sprayer Before Returning.? Because While Your Paint Color May Be Beautiful, I Don’t Want To See It All Over My Clothes When I Test It Out.? And See How Clean The Machine Is When I Give It To You?? If It’s Not This Clean When I Get It Back, I’m Charging You $100.

SuperMan rolls his eyes.

The spraying was, well, you’ll just have to experience it for yourself.? Five hours of sameness, staring at a blinding white house.? Gave myself a sunburn and a headache; SuperMan is so sore he can’t move his arms.? Tedium ad naseum.

Cleaned and returned the sprayer.? Four hour rental clocked in at 5:05, but we decided it was worth the extra bucks to both finish the house, and not die in the process.? Rolled it into the rental doors.? BurlyMan sees how clean it is, and actually giggles.? No kidding.? He is so tickled that he not only doesn’t charge us the $100 cleaning fee, but he takes off the $23 late fee.? Because what you have to realize is, while he can charge you the $100 fee, he doesn’t keep the $100.? And while he can give you back $23, it ain’t comin’ out of his pocket.? But by making things neat and clean, we just saved him 20 of his own minutes — which he will now get to spend on doing nothing.

epilogue:? SuperMan takes his payment in dinner and a cherry coke.? I take a Tylenol.? We bask in the gleaming whiteness and the irony that the cleanest part of the house is now the outside.

My Inner Zen is in labor.

Fixing up a home is a process. Like childbirth. But in dog years.

Both are filled with glorious phases that are much more palpable, even entertaining, when you are no longer in the middle of them. I am in the house painting phase, which is the homeowner’s equivalent of morning sickness. Random, pukey colors thrown up everywhere, on the hope that in the end they will pull together to form something wonderfully beautiful. Or at least something that doesn’t make you want to cry. As much.

And like my real childbirth experience (that they promised I’d forget), I find I have no cravings, but nauseating aversions to nearly everything in front of me. Everything is so intense even when I really try, I mean really reeaallly try, to be subtle.

Case in point:

Ocean View and Seven Seas with Planetarium trim. My first attempt, granted. I could paint giant flowers on it and turn my backyard into a daycare. But that’s not quite the effect I’m after.

Take two:

Lower colors: Winter Lake, Regatta Bay, and Twilight Chimes. Upper colors left intact to make sure I appreciate how far I’ve come. Neighborhood watch secretly calling the housing inspectors, *just in case*.

[Editor’s note: to whoever comes up with these ridiculous names, I hope you are sitting in a coffee shop somewhere enjoying your $7 mochalattichino buddy, cause there ain’t room in this economy for both of us. And one of us knows how to use power tools.]

Take three — tired of running to The Big HD, I decide to put my Photoshop skills to the test:

The navy taketh over. Hey, notso bad. Don’t know what color it is, but I kinda like it : ) I’ll call it… Midnight Aura. (Just kidding. I’ll call it “Blue”. Cause *that’s* novel.)

Still not sure what trim, but my good friend Vinty sent me this great link on painting blue houses: http://architecture.about.com/od/paint/ig/Blue/ (Truly, you can find ANYTHING on the internet. No matter how mundane.) I did like this line: “midnight blues suggest quiet dignity.” YES. That’s what I’m going for. After I go through labor, I want my quiet-frickin’-dignity.

I’ve also decided that if I had my dream house, it would look like one of these:

(Just kidding. My dream house is now officially brick.)

Homeowner’s Guide to Finding Your Inner Zen: Don’t be Blue. Or Planetarium.

swatch 1 swatch 2

yeah… I kinda don’t even know where to begin with this one. House painting is a brand new adventure for me. So I’ll start with just the facts, ma’am. And since I’ve recently been trying to convince my daughter that geometry is significant, let me tell this little tale in the form of a Geometric Proof:

My house needs to be painted. (Given)
The current “color scheme” is gray-blue with tomato trim. (“color scheme” is still a theory. Colors: Given.)
I hate the current color scheme. (um, given.)
So, I went up to Home Depot to choose new colors. (When you live .4 miles from The Big HD. Given. I think they have an isle named after me : P)
I choose medium blue with navy trim. (if you’ve ever seen my wardrobe, Given.)
Well, technically I chose “Ocean View”, “Seven Seas”, and “Planetarium”. (Inverse Color Naming Postulate)
Did you know house paint is available in 4 oz. sample jars?? (Homeowner’s Are Suckers Theorem; Inverse Wallet Theorem.)
I figured I’d test out the colors first, so I bought the samples. (Damn good thing I did, too.)
They look nothing like the little card. (Inverse Swatch Card Postulate)

You Decide! — Testing Paint Colors -- you decide!

sooo……. left side? right side? neither?? Luckily I have had a good relationship with my neighbors thus far. But clearly, there are no guarantees. Other than that blue is BLUE, even when it’s called “Planetarium”.