Picasso, I Am Not

First off, let me just announce once again that my husband is a saint. Currently he is making a frittata in our totally messed up kitchen as a follow up to the homemade pesto he made last night. I swear if it weren't for him I wouldn't have eaten in 2 days. Now that I've gotten that out of the way I can go on to address what's really going on in our lives. Basically we've been living without a kitchen or bathroom for about a week. I blame Swiss Coffee.

I think I've eluded to the upcoming changes that are coming up for us but have not gone into detail. There is a method to my madness in the fact that this has to be a staged communication to people here. Until those stakeholders are informed, my blog readers are just going to have to settle with me being mysterious and alluring.

We've decided to begin some home improvement projects, namely painting. The last thing I painted was the deck and before that I was 14 and "hired" by Pop (my grandfather) to paint the white fence that bordered the perimeter of their acre upon acre ranch. I was a terrible painter. Paint was mushed into the bristles and I was turpentined daily before being allowed back into the house.

My Dad never really "encouraged" us to explore with paint in our rooms. He was the family decorator as Mom was colorblind. In our house on the hill he chose the palate of gray. Gray walls, gray carpet, gray, gray, gray. God forbid we wanted to put up a blue. All of this work was professionally done. Before that house on the hill, the palate was off white in our house in the city. We had Jack and Roy, two brothers who were meticulous in their oil based application. They would come and eat my Mom's fresh baked cookies (she always made them for any service professional who was called - plumber, electrician, you name it), sip coffee, and paint. Even one time they did a small babysitting stint for us while Mom was out with a headache. My brother couldn't pronounce Roy's name so he just turned into "Ro." As far as my Dad was concerned, Jack and Ro were Gods when it came to managing the sheen, even application, and hard lines of painting. He would sing their praises when he came home. I think that with that early experience I thought that painting was and should be left to the masters. Clearly it was difficult.

When I finally bought my own home 4 years ago, I began to dream of painting my walls various hues. It was a pipe dream and I never even mustered the gusto to browse paint colors. My mantra that gave me a ton of courage to do anything by myself was my uncle's wisdom, "You can always repair it." I think it was that same Christmas that my Aunt and Mom gave my grandparents a gift of painting their living room for them. I was mildly surprised and waited for the final results. The room was a beautiful shade of butter cream and they did an amazing job. Score one for the ladies.

When my husband and I began to look into painting our walls, the process began about 3 months ago as we began to browse palates, complimentary hues, and even mustered the courage to *gasp* take home paint chips. Easter weekend we finally took the plunge and bought the supplies. While the Orange Bible of Home Improvement (read: Home Depot's 1,2,3) stated it was easy and inexpensive, I have a Visa bill that would state otherwise. Our Saturday night was spent washing the walls, patching, and masking. Sunday we actually broke out our paint.

It wasn't anything drastic. We had some MAJOR decisions between "innocence," "polar ice," and "Swiss coffee." Oh the drama between these shades of white! We rolled the Swiss coffee onto the walls of our bathroom Easter Sunday night and forewent the planned dinner of lamb chops and scalloped potatoes. Instead we settled for a "festive" dinner of Papa John's pizza.

That night the paint fumes must have gotten to Edgar because as if on cue with the 5:45 alarm clock, he barfed all over me and our clean sheets. I should also mention that the laundry room was pretty much blocked off with all of our painting prep as well, but somehow I had a load in by 6:00 and barfer boy looked rather apologetic. Aside from a few other problems, issues, etc, we did a pretty decent job. However, by Thursday our steam was running dry. Our norm was becoming sodium loaded take-out, eating dinner at our kitchen table in the living room, stepping on the paper boxes and tarps, and blue masking tape stuck to our socks and Edgar's fur. Our house is a disaster.

Our "break" has turned into 3 days. We finally admitted defeat when it came to our 20 foot high wall and cathedral ceilings. We hired someone who will come in to do both of these and helped us pick an "accent" color for one of our large walls. While J and I were leaning toward a smoky blue, our painter (in his expertly color coordinated suit) suggested a cappuccino to "bring out the earthy warm tones you are obviously drawn to." Obviously. Obviously? The guy works as a consultant for Ethan Allen as his real gig and although he wears a wedding ring, I can't help but wonder given his natural talents and flair.

It seems like this process is taking FOREVER and yet we both feel as if we're running a marathon. Today my one goal is to sand down the trim and start with that. Perhaps, just perhaps, we can reclaim the bathroom as ours this evening.