Why I’ll Never Paint Again
About a year ago, we bought our first house. It was built in the mid 1950s and I think the lady who sold it to us was the original owner. So, as you can imagine, the interior color scheme was a bit out of date.
After closing was complete, the first thing we did was buy paint and primer. My wife spent almost a month painting the ceilings and the walls and was so exhausted by the end that she swore off painting forever.
I was equally done. I worked eight hours a day and then spent two or three painting. It was a chore I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
At the end of that month, we still hadn’t painted the old wood doors or the trim! We looked at each other and said, “Eh, it can wait.” We were completely prepared to live with it for awhile until we could muster up the energy to try again.
That’s when my mom stepped in and recommended we hire a professional house painter. Before our month-long ordeal, we would have said, “Why? We can do it ourselves.” Now, we thanked her for the advice and called that very same day.
The painter worked on our doors and trim for about a week. He arrived around 9 a.m. and left around 4 a.m. and I wouldn’t have been able to tell if he’d been there if I hadn’t seen such rapid progress. He always cleaned up his mess and put the furniture back in its place.
Having painted our entire house ourselves, my wife and I were particularly keyed in on the whole pre- and post-painting process that seemed to occupy the bulk of our time. My wife related to me one night how the painter we had hired didn’t use a drop cloth or painter’s tape (both of which we had used in abundance). He was so practiced he could paint without it. That still amazes me to this day.
