This is going to be one of those rambly posts today and the reason for this is that I have just started painting my living room and I am totally shattered. In the words of Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon 'I'm too old for this shit'...
My living room is a bright green and when I say bright, I mean bright. I think it is rather a zingy, cheerful sort of colour myself. Somebody once said that when she visited me and the sun shone through the window she felt as if she was sitting in a field. Now, that could be taken two ways I suppose but I chose to think that it made her feel springlike and happy. Others thought it was all too much too bear.
Well, it has been up now for five years and even I am now beginning to weary of this assault on my senses and have decided to go for a change. So off to DIY places, bring home loads of colour charts and sit and look and then I begin to go cross eyed and think oh that yellow is nice, oh but the sage green looks good too, mmm how about dark red and what do I think of blue and of course I am now going slowly mad. I think I have settled on duck egg blue but the problem is that duck egg blue is a different shade from each paint manufacturer ranging from a pale insipid washed out colour to a dark rather dreary one.
Staggered home with lots of tester pots and started doing little squares on my walls and then realised with a sinking heart that the green is SO bright that I can get no idea at all of what these blues look like. In fact, it will probably take about two coats of any colour to cover it up. So I did what I always do in these circs, chucked the tester pots in the rubbish and made a cup of tea.
That was three weeks ago and I have now bitten the bullet and realised that I have to slosh white emulsion over the green before I can even think of doing anything else and that is what I have been doing today. I have quite a large living room and decided no point in trying to do it all in one go as I would merely kill myself in the attempt, so moved furniture over to one side of the room, covered everything in old blankets and sheets kept for decorating purposes and then started.
Nothing is ever straightforward in Schloss Random and first of all the roller (which had been sitting around for a while I admit), was rock hard, and though I had soaked it in hot water was still pretty resistant to taking paint, but I persevered. Mistake. Because it was so hard and no give, the paint spattered off the wall onto moi and within ten minutes of painting I was covered in a fine spray of white paint spots from head to foot. I began to feel like Stephanie Plum when she is attempting to capture somebody and she ends up being smothered in tomato sauce, paint, dust, dirt, garbage whatever. I then found I had a spare roller in the cupboard. Oh Joy so decided to change it but took me about ten minutes to prise the old one off as the old paint had solidified round it. Well managed it in the end and put the new roller on and off I went and then discovered that the new roller kept coming away from the handle and I had to keep shoving
it in every ten seconds. Which I did and managed to get the walls done - well two to be precise at which point I decided enough for one day and cleared up, shoved the furniture back, hoovered behind all aforementioned furniture first, oh the dust and dirt, oh the shame of it all, had a shower, washed hair etc and then crashed out on my bed for a couple of hours.
I am now sitting in the most dreary looking living room, half green half white and it is clear that my decision to put a coat of white on before I embarked on anything else, was the right one as even though it has dried the green is peeping through underneath. However, a coat of the new paint - when I make up my mind - should be ok.
I know you are thinking what an exciting life I lead here in Colchester but I am going to stop now and save the next instalment How I painted the Other Two Walls for another day. Not looking forward to tomorrow when I know I must finish this - and the books! all the books have to come down and I paint behind them - and then once that has been done then I have to put the paint of my choice on the walls and you know what? I'm not sure any more about the duck egg blue now and haven't the faintest idea which colour to pick.
I should have let well alone, I know I should have done...
PS - Look at this stupid picture. Just look at it. No paint anywhere, she is immaculate, no spots of paint in her hair. Grumble, grumble, grumble.....
