Pain... Paint

For some crazy reason (I'm not even going to try to explain it) I am in the process of:

- painting my kitchen

- putting a new floor (linoleum) in my kitchen

- putting a new refrigerator in my kitchen

- bricking things up inside the chimney (in my kitchen)

- dying from the fumes of a thousand chemicals (again, in my kitchen)

To put this in perspective, my kitchen is part of an old New England farm house. It was built in 1871... and the walls are made of horse-hair plaster. That's plaster which has been insulated with horsehair, for those who don't know. My kitchen — like all kitchens in the late 1800's — also had wallpaper over the plaster.

The process of renovating this mess goes something like this:

1) Peel off wallpaper. Take about an hour to get most of it off, and another ten hours to get all the fucking little pieces.

2) Fix the plaster. You see, some of it comes off with the wallpaper, no matter how hard you try. Take another few hours to do this.

3) While waiting for the plaster to dry, check yourself into a mental hospital.

4) When dry, sand the plaster so its smooth and start priming it. Primer is like paint except it sucks more. It is sticky and hard to use, and is full of noxious chemicals.

5) Wait for the primer to dry. This doesn't take long, because by the time you've finished priming all of the annoying little pieces of wainscoting and window sills, the first wall you did is probably already dry.

6) Start painting with real paint. This is easier, unless you look around yourself at the mess you've made during steps 1-5. If you do, you'll pass out when affronted by your own stupidity at undertaking such a heinous project.

7) Once you regain consciousness, check to see if the paint is dry. If it is, apply another coat. Except that spot behind the fridge that nobody will ever see. That only needs one coat. I mean let's face it, it's time to cut corners.

...I'm in the middle of step 5 right now. Actually, I'm done with 5... but I missed a few things. Still, I'm officially leaving those for the wife and going on to step 6 anyway. If I'm lucky, I'll get to step seven just as she finishes step 6, so we can skimp the last bit and go directly past step 8 (clean up) to step 9 (drink a lot) and possibly on to step 10 (burn the house down and claim the insurance money).