Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

We had a painting party at my dad's on Father's Day. It was my sister's main present to him, but we all pitched in. Blame it on Trading Spaces.

We came up with the idea to repaint Dad's apartment after watching a Trading Spaces marathon this past winter. We saw one room we really loved, which was done in yellow, a marigold orange and a deep dark red.

So we're doing several rooms in his apartment with those colors.

We started with the dining room. We were painting the walls Power Orange, I think it was called. Or Dynamic Orange. Energetic Orange. Something like that. It was an orange-yellow color. On Saturday, we had done the primer, and you could see all of the flowers from the wallpaper through it. My dad had some old wallpaper which he tried to take off with a rented steamer. It didn't work, so we decided to paint over it. This would have been a better idea if he hadn't actually ripped some small segments of it so the walls aren't exactly what you might call smooth. But we did our best.

I'd thought ahead and brought plenty of music to listen to. While we painted we listened to Janis Joplin, the Steve Miller Band, John Lennon. The music really helps you pick up the pace, especially when the room starts turning orange.

The one problem that we ran into was that we were working in a small room which wasn't particularly well ventilated, and we had to work with the doors closed so that dogs and cats wouldn't run through there and accidentally step on a drop of paint that they'd then track all over the apartment.

We had one little fan going and it was not moving much air. When you were doing edging work near the ceiling, on the ladder, heat rises. I had the biggest bottle of water I could buy, but obviously I should have had two or three of them that day. By the end of the day, I had a headache and felt out of it. I almost fell in a paint can. There was one funny moment where my sister stepped on the paint can lid, which we had on the floor. Then she stepped onto the drop cloth and we were talking about whether we should move the lid someplace. Two minutes later, she stepped on it again. I was up on top of the ladder feeling lightheaded; I just about fell off.

My dog, Una, enjoyed it. She sat outside in the kitchen and watched through the glass in the door. She seemed to find this entertaining. Of course, she doesn't see colors, so as far as she was concerned, we were changing it from one shade of gray to another shade of gray. And that's probably why she found it so amusing, to go through all this trouble. Silly humans, smearing things on the walls.

My brother actually works as a painter right now, so we called and left a question on his answering machine. My dad insisted you had to wait 24 hours for one coat to dry before putting on a second, and my sister and I disagreed. My brother didn't call back, but by the time we finished the fourth wall, we checked the first one. It was dry, so we just started the second coat anyway. We were joking about how he would inspect the walls when he visits, point out all the flaws and tell us how we should have done it.

As we finished, a little dizzy and very tired, we decided that even though the walls are uneven, the bright color makes up for it. It will, of course, look even better once we finish the trim and the decor.

And just imagine, only two rooms to go!

Tales from another Father's Day:

June 21, 2004 - American Dad

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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