Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Not so young as they are painted

In the shadow of true creative arts, I have a more prosaic effort to document. Yesterday I started preparations to paint my bathroom in earnest, and learned that even unthinking solid colors are a pain in the ass. (Paint in the ass-- hah.) I had help removing the towel racks, cleared out as much as I could of toiletries, and then started taping with absurd bright-blue painter's tape, all along the trim, mirror, and outlets. I tried to tape just where the white trim stopped and the acid-green wall began, but it wasn't necessarily where the wall and trim had initially been divided by their Creator. I spent a couple hours, breathing in the tape's gluey smell, aggressively debating whether I should try to abide by the original trim's boundaries, or just try to cover the bits where green overstepped. Surely it's less classy for fluorescent green to be splattered around the edges of the new, hopefully classy green? It is ridiculous to be engaged in trim philosophy, knowing that any attempt to sell this house will require professionals to revamp the whole thing. And for that matter no one will stare at the trim line. But I'll know, and that remains the power of DIY-- the torment of learning by doing, and then having to live with the repulsive fruits. Spotted, bruised, misshapen fruits, flecked with acid green.

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