Painting Can Be Fun

I’m in between jobs right now and took this opportunity to paint my basement. Let me start by defining “in between jobs.” It means I was employed before and not employed now. Better known as jobless. Anyway, I would like to get my house sold and thought this would be a good time to get it ready. First let me tell you I don’t know anything about painting. In third grade I received a paint-by-number set for my birthday. By the time I was finished it was all messed up. All these years I thought it was because I was poor in math; come to find out its because I am such a bad painter.

I couldn’t tell you the difference between satin, glossy, fine line, extra heavy fine, smooth, latex, indoor/outdoor,or light beige maroon. But I did learn a lot this morning as I went and bought primer. I thought primer was only used on old wrought iron picnic furniture, lawnmowers, and ’79 El Camino’s.

So I go into the store and for the sake of argument lets say its uh…I don’t know…a Wal-mart. Oh wait, it would be a Wal-mart as all the other stores in town are out of business. The guy in the paint dept, Allan, about 84 years old, and I think on his fifth job since officially retirement, is a huge help. He knows all the right questions, exactly where everything is, and even throws in a giant popsicle stick for good measure. I just hope he wasn’t saving it from his last visit to the doctor.

So I get home with the paint stuff. I have two brushes, a roller, primer, tape and the 12″ tea-stirrer. I gotta tell ya, I has such a good time throwing that slop around. I found a dark little corner and started there with the little brush. It looked pretty good. So then I did a back wall behind the door. That looked really good. Before you know it I had the 6″ rollerbrush with a half a gallon of paint in the tray and I was going to town. I never knew how relaxing painting could be. It didn’t long until I was in the garage pulling out the 6 ft ladder. I’m hoisting the can up onto the top step and you’d think I was Van Gogh!

It was looking good. About 2 1/2 hours later I ran out of primer. Still had about third of the basement to finish. I was so disappointed. ‘Ol Allan at Wal-mart said a can would be enough. But of course I didn’t expect to use half the can for practice. Needless to say, it took me about two weeks to finish. My lesson from all this is that I’m glad I painted it myself. I learned a lot, took pride in what I did, and was able to sell the house without paying too much money to a contractor.