Monday, August 9, 2010

How to Paint a Baby's Room

In 27 Easy Steps (For small rooms only)

1. Choose a color. It is helpful to remember that black, blood red and screaming orange do not generally make for a soothing nursery environment.
2. Buy paint. Forget to buy something vitally important.
3. Begin painting. Neglect the priming step.
4. Discover for the first time in your marital and home improvement history that you have bought a paint that does NOT need either 2 coats of prime or 5 coats of paint to cover.
5. Decide to buy Valspar paint forevermore.
6. Realize that you have neglected (yet again) to adequately cover the floor in drop cloths.
7. Discover that the paint comes up from the floor pretty well when you rub it with your socked foot.
8. Run back to paint store to buy vitally important something that was forgotten in step 2. You will repeat this step as necessary.
9. Drip a ridiculous amount of paint on yourself, then worsen the situation by using the paintbrush to try to clean the worst of it off your shirt. Discover that you have painted your pregnant belly through the shirt.
10. Graciously refrain from killing your partner, when, instead of getting you a rag for cleaning yourself up, he gets a camera and takes some candids.
11. Get to the point where you have painted the ceiling and cut in on the walls. This is the recommended time for one member of the painting team to have an anaphylactic reaction of some kind. Stop painting. (For this step, it is preferable that the non-pregnant member of the team be the one to experience anaphylaxis. Team members can switch off on this duty when performing other home improvement projects).
12. Have floors refinished. This step should take no less than 1 week.
13. Carefully lay drop cloths so that every square millimeter of newly refinished flooring is now covered.
14. Resume painting.
15. Say some extremely bad words when you discover just how textured the fershtunkiner walls are, particularly in the high peaked corners of the room where it is both difficult to reach and too low to stand on a ladder to get to for fear of braining yourself.
16. Continue cursing. Quoting The Big Lebowski may help at this point.
17. Move the carefully lain drop cloths so that they are covering the next area of floor. Discover that the drop cloths are useless pieces o' shite because the paint that has fallen on them has simply dripped through the cloth, getting on the floor.
18. See steps 15 and 16.
19. Discover that the paint comes up with some water and elbow grease, with the exception of where the paint bucket sat. The sock trick also works. However, now is the optimum time to discover that where the paint is thickest on the floor, it has seeped into grooves of the hardwood.
20. Use some extremely bad words as you return to the paint store to buy goof off. If you are doing this home improvement project correctly, this should be at least your fourth total trip to the store.
21. Don't realize until you have reached the store that you look like Crazy Preggo McCovered-In-Paint. Try to reassure yourself that others are also in the midst of DIY projects and will be similarly attired and hair-sticky-uppy. Fail to find anyone even remotely as disheveled as you.
22. Nap
23. Allow camera-wielding partner to finish goofing off the floor and painting the room while you nap.
24. Remove painter's tape.
25. Invent new bad words as you discover that the texture of the walls have made it impossible to create a clean line under the painter's tape.
26, Think wistful thoughts about margaritas.
27. Congratulate yourself that the baby will not care.

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