How to do it: paint something.

I have been on a She-woman-can-do-it-herself kick recently and Labor Day weekend was the perfect excuse to tackle another project and learn something new.

Here's how you paint something (for example, this random shelf that you use for towels in your bathroom):

 

1-Clean it. Really good. Get some fantastick and a paper towel and go to town. Clean the whole thing. Twice. Get even the bits that you don't think you need to, because guess what? You do. The worst thing is finding a giant tumbleweed of hair as you are trying to paint. 

2- Prime all the edges.

"But my paint has primer in it!"

"Stop talking. Prime it."

The whimsical painting of furniture that you are getting yourself into probably involves painting surfaces that have no business being painted. You're way better off just getting in the habit of priming.

3- Prime the rest of it. With a roller. Like the grown ass lady you are. This is not third grade art class. You need a roller even for a job that seems small.

4- Wrap up your brush & roller very tightly in plastic bags (grocery is fine). You want the paint to stick to the bag & for it to get as little air as possible so that they don't dry out during the next step. 

5- Watch an episode of Orange Is the New Black (or two episodes of Arrested Development, depending on where you are in life).  

6- Reprime everything in the same order (edges then everything else). You want the original color to be kind of a mystery. Wash your brush and your roller really, really well or you will be sad later.

7- Go hang out at your friend's pool. Feel real fancy. 

8- Draft a mediocre fantasy football team because there are some things you can only care so much about. 

9- Figure out where you put that Oops Paint you bought on a whim a few months ago.

10- The primer should be dry enough now, go ahead and paint, in the same order you primed.

11- Stop being such a weenie, you probably won't run out of paint. 

12- Once it is all painted and you haven't missed anything and you've checked four times, give the cat a quick talking to about not getting near the paint. Wash all the things.

13- Wait a day. Find all the spots you missed. Paint one more time. 

14- Be so impressed with yourself it doesn't even really matter that you kind of hate the color now.

 

Scrambling...

So for the first time in my whole life, I have a job where when I am at work, I do work pretty much all day. I will take the occasional cnn/facebook/gofugyourself break but for the most part I am busy all day.

While this does have its merits (like feeling productive) it also has its downfalls (like being tired and stressed out).

Also it means that blogging is going to be hard on the days that I am here (at this very moment, this job is only part time). So I am blogging right now mid-email, so I don't forget.

My apartment is not even close to being done. We needed 2 coats of primer in the nook and we didn't notice until like 10 PM last night that our bedroom ceiling is like 13 feet high. Sweet, except for painting. But we are optomistic, particulary because this is a great excuse to eat crappy delivery food and not feel bad about it. So tonight we are going to roll our faces off (not in the cool way, in the painting way).

In other Friday morning news, I suggested we use "Daydreaming" by Lupe Fiasco in our Spring childrens show and my co-worker laughed. Then he made me go look up the lyrics. Damn you, Lupe, you are a filthy fast-talking bastard. Its still a real good song, despite the line about making cocaine cool. Cocaine is not cool, kids. Unless you have a trust fund. Even then its really kind of a cliche.

More blogging later? Maybe... Except probably not, so I'm going to leave you with this:



nataliedee.com

Paint the town

No Seriously...

Sometime before February 25, I will have moved my entire life into a brand new apartment. But before I move, I have to paint. Yes. HAVE.

Back when I was young, I did not find value in chosing the colors of my walls. My bedroom in my Mom's house was this pinkish-purple color with an unfortunate accent wall of stripped wallpaper. It was fine while I was growing up until my penchance for posters and other crap on my walls totally destroyed it. Now there are these giant sploches of exposed plaster everywhere. Luckily, its my baby-sister's problem now.

Anyway, occasionally I would want to paint it, but my Mom always said that I didn't keep it clean enough. So I wasn't allowed. Touche, Mom.

So in every apartment and living situation I've always just accepteded the colors and moved on. I've lived in rooms that were coral, orange, green, and various shades of dirty-white.

This was fine until I moved in with the Boyfriend. In our first apartment (a year ago) - the master bedroom was this atrocious shade of mustard yellow. I still, to this day, cannot figure out why anyone who wasn't cracked out on European Interior Design magazines would think that was an acceptable color to paint ANYTHING.

At this point we were still in the woo-ing stage in our relationship and I told Boyfriend that I would never live in a bedroom this color. So we picked out paint and painted it (and the attached bathroom which was the SAME color. Horrifying.) - and it turned out really pretty.

So now we're moving and in our new apartment there is only one room (techinically its a nook) that is painted an unfortuntate color. The bathroom and the bedroom are both white, not great, but not terrible.

I figured since we are two very busy people with careers and theater engagements, we would just leave them the sad droopy white and go about our lives.

Inc ase you haven't figured out by now - I was gravely mistaken.

So we're painting. But of course, we don't have "days off" and we only gave ourselves 10 days to get everything done - so we're painting at night. I got home from seeing the Joffrey's Cinderella at 10:30 last night, only to spend the next three hours covering the bathroom with blue tape.

Tonight I will spend a cool 6 or 7 hours (after work) painting the nook (which was orange, and so really needed the paint job), bathroom and bedroom. One can only hope we'll get it all done, but I am not holding my breath.

This is, naturally, before any actual moving happens.

Last night around 12:30 the Boyfriend (who, bless his little go-getter heart had been working since 6 or 7 PM) turned to me and said, "are there people we can to do this for us, like Power Movers but with paint?"

"Yes. They're called painters."

"When are we going to figure out that its worth our time to pay people to do this for us."

"Um...soon?"

"Good."