Indoor Camping: Fixing Up the Fixer-Upper

Friday, December 31, 2004

Vegan Ceiling

“You’re perfect for this job,” I tell the Vegan, pointing to the spot where the ceiling and walls meet. “Take one look and you can see I’m not.”

This is why I had kids: to find me the remote, to buy me groceries, and to do my work. They don’t mind the first two jobs and they enjoy painting with the roller almost as much as me. It’s the drawn-out detailed work we dislike.

Drawn-out detailed work is all I have to offer. It’s Christmas vacation and the Vegan’s car insurance is due. I’ve got him where I want him.

“You’re the tallest person in the house. You don’t even need a ladder,” I say. “You’re the only one who has enough patience. You’re the only one living here who doesn’t have A.D.D.”

The edges between the walls and ceilings in this house are abnormally bumpy. You can’t get a good line where the wall color ends and the ceiling begins. I’ve been snooping at friends’ homes, looking up at this spot when invited in. I’ve seen some amazing work. I know it can be done, but not by A.D.D. me.

The three bedrooms and landing upstairs had awful popcorn ceilings when we moved in. The Vegan and his friends were paid well to remove it. Charlie textured it for free. I rolled and rolled again, sometimes giving the walls three coats of color. We’ve lived here long enough for me to change my mind that many times.

I did the edges the first time or two. The first time I did them carefully. The second time, not so much. Now the rooms are a wall of warm nutmeg with a stripe by the ceiling of toasted grain or comforting. The white ceilings are nice. The stripe is not.

There’s a cutting-in controversy in our house. Charlie and I both painted for profit and we both have different cutting-in preferences. Charlie likes to cut in the edges by hand. He has good eyes and keeps his brush steady. His lines are straight but the edges on the walls are not. The edges he’s eyed in this house aren’t any better than mine.

I’m more of a tape person, but I’ll give it a try by eye. I should know better. I have a degree in art and I got it by using a lot of straight-edges and guide-lines. I could never eye anything. After what seemed like ten minutes, my neck hurt from being bent too far backwards and my face hurt from squinting. Before I get to the corner, I thought to myself, I’ll be insane. I stopped.

I wouldn’t even try to get the General to do this tedious of a job although she owes us hundreds in Abercrombie dollars. She borrowed my credit card to buy Christmas gifts for her friends and returned with clothes for herself. She’ll be working for me way past next Christmas. Not on this mind-numbing job, though. She gets impatient talking on the phone for more than two minutes.

I didn’t even think of doing the edges after stopping mid-wall. I left the big ladder on the stairs, so this and the stripe by the ceilings advertised my laziness for weeks. My lack of communication resulted in Charlie eventually finding me some masking tape. It was real masking tape, not painter’s tape. That would have involved yet another trip to Home Depot.

I paid the Vegan to mask off the ceilings and told him to press lightly. He’s very careful so he made sure the lines were straight. It took me only a few minutes to cover up the stripe. I was pretty proud of myself. I would have gone downstairs to brag to Charlie, except when I pulled of the tape, the ceiling came off, too.

The Vegan followed directions well. He obviously pressed the tape lightly against the ceiling, as the ceiling texture and paint didn’t come off in complete strips. It came off only where the Vegan must have pressed, looking like pock marks on a teenager’s face.

“There’s this blue tape you’re supposed to use on painted walls,” the Vegan said.

“How’d you know?”

“I watched them painting our school.”

This only gave the Vegan more potential car insurance money. He spackled the pock marks and smoothed some of them out before getting distracted by an interesting chat room conversation.

He sanded down the spackle after many gentle but repeated reminders. I decided to try to paint the ceilings myself. I was working harder at getting him to work than doing the working myself. I bent my neck way back and started squinting once again.

I messed up early and often. I made myself feel better by talking to myself. “We ought to think about selling this house,” I said out loud. “It’s just not working for me anymore.” This pleased me enough to keep working. It always makes me feel better knowing we’ll finish this house someday and when it’s sold, we’ll buy a little already-fixed-up condo somewhere cheap and spend all our discretionary income on trips to third-world countries and stay in tiny hotels nicer than this piece of crap house.

I lasted about twenty more minutes then I got out the big guns. I went into the Vegan’s room and said, “Isn’t your car insurance due in a couple of days?”

He got up quickly. I guess the idea of walking everywhere took priority over his chat room.

“If you get frustrated,” I tell him, “take a break then get back to it. You are good at this kind of stuff. The rest of us can’t do this for very long before we have to throw something.”

“Okay,” he says. “I have an idea I think I’ll try. I’m going to use cardboard as a shield.”

He started in without another gentle reminder. He was so quiet I assumed he was back on the computer.

The quiet lasted for another hour until he flew down the stairs with more energy than usual. “I like energy drinks,” he said. “I’ve been drinking them upstairs.”

“Whatever it takes.”

“I gotta say I like the way the paint is a different color wet than when it dries. You can write ‘poop’ on the walls. You wanna see?”

I followed him upstairs. For the first time in months I didn’t automatically look at the stripe by the ceiling. There, in nicely scripted wet warm nutmeg, was the word “poop” on the dry wall.

“It’s subliminal,” I said.

“Look,” he said. “I wrote toilet over there.”

I’ve never seen anyone so excited about paint before. Not even me.

A little help? [] 2:47:50 PM