To Paint, Perchance to Spill

I had a room to paint, and that scared me.

Painting has never been my forte. Instead, it’s my anti-forte. (If that isn’t a word, it should be. Also, for the record, breakfast for dinner is my forte.) Anyway, painting is my anti-forte because I’m a naturally messy person when it comes to accomplishing chores. Spills, drips, crashes, bangs, slips, slops, drops, leaks, and small fires seem to follow me around, and that’s just when I’m trying to make cereal for breakfast. It gets worse during the rest of the day. So, arming me with a brush and a gallon of paint is one of the last things anybody, including myself, would ever want to do.

But I had a room to paint.

And as if my penchant for messiness wasn't enough, I was also out of practice. I hadn’t done any real painting since back in my college days, where over about a three-year stretch I did quite a bit of it. I painted everything from walls to doors to lockers to the backs of unwary co-worker’s shirts. Even back then, my messiness was in full swing, so needless to say, by the end of college every single one of my work shirts looked like a rainbow had melted directly onto it.

My favorite college mishap was when I was painting the metal frame of a hockey net. To do parts of this, I had to squat inside of said net. I’d just finished painting the underside of the crossbar and decided to stand up to stretch. Unfortunately, I forgot a very critical step in this process, which was to make sure I’d gotten myself completely clear of the net before doing so. Because of this slight oversight, I ran into the crossbar on the way up, resulting in a thick bar of bright red paint transferring over to the back of my shirt. Talk about your Red Badge of D’oh!

But, despite my dismal college track record, I still had a room to paint, and there was no getting around it.

So I got to work.

The key to painting is to tape everything off correctly. To do this, you need to get the highest quality tape and spend several presidential administrations wiping down and carefully taping off everything that needs it, including baseboards, windows, outlets, passing household pets, etc. While not exciting, and potentially a cure for insomnia, this job is still well worth it in the end.

Not that it will make the quality of your paint job any better, mind you. No matter how much time you spend taping, paint will still leak underneath. It’s a basic rule of nature, much like geese spending ninety percent of their time wandering through busy intersections looking confused. However, if you can honestly say that you gave a maximum effort during your taping job, then you’re justified in moaning and complaining about how taping never works when painting, despite what the internet tells you. This is a must for anybody who’s just finished painting a room and needs to come up with a good excuse for the numerous drips and runs left behind on the baseboards and windows.

When everything is taped off you next have to "cut in" with a brush in several key areas, including the corners, where the wall meets the ceiling, where the wall meets the baseboards, around the doors and windows, and around any furniture you were too lazy to move because it looked kind of heavy. This is the most mind-numbing job ever, beating out even United States Congressperson, and you will absolutely hate it after roughly thirty seconds. After sixty seconds, you’ll probably wish that you were still taping things off. But persevere through, because soon you’ll get to use a roller!

Rolling the walls is the most fun. It’s a payoff for all of your prior hard work taping and cutting. Now this is where you can really get some color going fast! The key is to apply consistent pressure throughout, in order to apply a uniform coat of paint. If you can’t keep consistent pressure, however, don’t worry. Nobody will notice anyway, because your roller will soon begin to shed little pieces of nap, which will get caught up in the paint and transferred over to your wall, ultimately making it look like you rolled over several cats in your hurry to get the room painted. A non-uniform coat of paint will be the least of your worries.

That's basically how my painting session went. However, I was actually halfway pleased with the result, as it could have gone much worse. For example, I could have stepped directly into the paint bucket, a la just about any Archie Andrews comic, or I could have been painting a hockey net.

In addition, ever since I did the painting and noticed all of the tiny imperfections afterwards, I’ve begun to look at the paint jobs in other houses, and I’ve realized that they all have basically the same problem as mine!

This has led me to a very important conclusion: Painting perfectly is all but impossible and everybody eventually settles, and so should you. This means that you need to subscribe to the “I’m Sick Of This, Let’s Be Done And Get Some Dinner” school of thought. If you don’t, you’ll just drive yourself crazy trying to make everything perfect. Remember, even if one of your visitors were to notice a few drops, runs, or streaks, there's a good chance they wouldn't even care, because their house probably looks exactly the same.

Plus, they're most likely wondering about the massive colony of bacteria growing in your bathroom, taking guesses as to how often it is you actually clean in there, and debating whether or not you'll need a flame flower the next time you get around to it.