It'll Just Take a Coupla Days

On and off this year, as my energy and mood both lean to the positive, I've been giving the rooms in my house a face lift. Nothing major; I've been taking 3-4 days in each room to fill in nail holes, fix a few plaster cracks, and give the space a fresh coat of paint (using the same colors to minimize the work).

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to tackle the last room, the living room. I had a few days open, and though it would feel good to be able to check the project off my to-do list. I moved out a bunch of the furniture, clustered what was left in the middle of the room, and covered it with sheets to protect it from errant paint drops. I still had a little time and energy left when I finished up, and convinced myself to take one more step.

"Just dig out those few cracks", she said.
"It won't take long", she said.

(she = me, talking to myself)

So, I got out my scraper, and started to work on the walls. As I was digging out the first crack, the edge of my scraper slipped under the paint next to where I was working. "huh.  What's that about?" I let the tool slide up and under just a little, then pulled at the corner of the loose paint. A large patch of paint peeled off the wall, like peeling a sticker off its backing. "uh oh. not good"

I stopped there for a moment, trying to convince myself it was just an anomaly. Surely, I could just pretend I hadn't seen what I'd just seen, and move on without pause. Surely, I could just patch over the edge of the patch I'd peeled, and call it good. But good sense prevailed. If I didn't want to be doing it over within the year, I needed to buckle down and do it right. And I HATE doing things over.

*sigh* I gotta admit - I aimed a few choice cuss words in "her" direction as I put the scraper down and called it a night. (I've learned that some tasks are best tackled after a good night's rest.)  "She" never has learned how to properly guesstimate how long any given project will take. *sigh*

The next morning, I set to scraping and peeling in earnest. Within a couple of hours, a good 80% of the paint had come off the walls in good-sized, easy-to-peel sheets. Turns out someone had spent a lot of time doing a pretty darn good job of skim-coating the walls, but then had skipped the step of priming the raw plaster before slapping on a coat of paint. That, and they'd put the skim coat over the old plaster cracks without digging out the soft plaster first, and when I peeled off the paint, the repairs gave way. What a mess!

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and it turned out to be not all THAT bad. The plaster repair skills I honed last year at the castle served me well - the plaster repair part went WAY faster than it would have two years ago. And while you know I didn't skip the primer step before I put the two coats of paint on the walls, the job still didn't take as long as I was afraid it was going to, back when I peeled off that first square of paint. (I am certainly grateful I don't charge me by the hour for the work I do - this one would have totally blown the budget!)

I finished putting the room back together last night. After I'd placed the last tchotchke back in its home, I took a step back, admired the clean look of the room, and gave me a pat on the back.

"Good job", she said.