Naked, Raw, Home Repair Gone Wild

Lady goes for Olympic record for most walls painted

We are halfway through room two. I have a sinus headache, which I attribute to the dust from the nasty carpet we’ve taken out.

We have two dogs and no dog door, so the carpet is disgusting. Despite the likelihood that whatever is trapped in there might kill me, I am over the moon that it is LEAVING FOREVER.

This time I’m serious about never removing carpet again, or installing flooring, and most of all — never painting another wall.

I’m nearing sixty. This has to stop.

The only relationship I want with paint, whether it be flat or satin, is securing the greatest job in the history of the world: naming paint colors.

For example, “crack pipe mist” or “wet fox.”

They need a poet, and I’m ready to step up, so long as I don’t have to smell the paint.

I still make bonehead, rookie errors. I’ve painted approximately 182 walls in roughly 27 different colors in 17 houses I’ve owned or rented, so by now, you’d think I had some common sense.

(Pro tip: don’t paint any room the color of Barney the dinosaur).

This time, I wanted to use up some leftover exterior paint, which is doing nothing but sitting at the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket. So I slapped some “sunlit mesa” on one accent wall in the bedroom.

But I didn’t use it all up so I went to get more exterior, satin “sunlit mesa” to paint the second room, because I’m a cheap bastard. It was then I ran into Gary the Paintman at the hardware store:

“You don’t want to use exterior paint inside. They put pesticides and fire retardants in it.”

“Uh-oh, what should I do?” I said, with a look of genuine puzzlement and mild shame.

“Just slap a coat of Kilz on there.”

Gary knows his paint, so I sighed and bought a gallon of eggshell white Kilz and repainted the bedroom wall.

Because why paint two coats when you can paint three?

Carpet Is Grosser than Most Porn

I didn’t want carpet but it came with the house. It’s been giving me a giant, beige middle finger for years. It’s also the place the dogs occasionally do their biz when:

— It was raining too hard

— They weren’t feeling well

— We forgot their evening walk

— They just felt like it

I knew intellectually the carpet was more disgusting than a scene from Human Centipede, yet it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame to rip the stuff up and smell it. The layer under the carpet, which I’m pretty sure is highly toxic straight from the factory, is where dreams go to die.

I’ve wanted to replace this carpet for years, but every time I looked up flooring costs I felt faint and woozy. When I came to, I’d conveniently forgotten about the stains.

Then I’d walk into the room and spy a new stain, and go online….

If you’ve owned a home, you know how it goes: if you are going to put in a new floor, you might as well paint.

Or is that just me?

I took forays down to the ReStore to see if someone had deposited 450 square feet of click-together vinyl in a color I liked.

They had not.

After a vacation, I stopped putting it off and girded up my loins, and handed the Empire of Flooring Goodness (not its real name) $1600.

We ripped the offending textile out, and now it’s lying in a lifeless and stinky pile in the garage. My handyman and his son are coming next week to haul it to the dump.

We’ll end up with seven different colors of wood, laminate, tile, and vinyl in this house but by gods, the malodorous beige is no more.

Paint Ethics Take a Hit

This is our second painting and flooring room, and I painted the first room alone, including the ill-advised sunlit mesa wall.

Beginning tomorrow, we are painting together.

We are on a bicycle built for two. I’m definitely taking the backseat. My plan is to pedal until I feel tired or distracted, then sit quietly and watch the scenery go by.

Is that wrong?

He’s 15 years older than me and has a bad back, but I’m still considering coasting.

We are painting eggshell white over a heavy sage green, which I painted three years ago. I chose this infernal, hard-to-cover color. It will take two coats, at least.

I had my reasons for that color, what I would name “angry grasshopper.” As Spock would say, it was the logical choice at the time.

Ah! I’ve got it — I just figured it out. This endless painting is symbolic!

I’m trying to cover something up. But what?

Does This Mean I’ll Never Paint Again?

When I ponder my painting proclivity, I realize I have nothing to cover up. I’m too shallow for that. I want everything to look pretty, but I also sit on the fence when it comes to owning a home.

When you are lazy and hate spending money, maybe it’s better to rent.

I suppose some lucky millionaires live on cruise ships, where a servant cleans their cabin while they sashay around a European city looking for a sidewalk cafe with a Van Gogh view.

Prisoners have skirted the maintenance issue, but it’s a high price to pay. I have this feeling prison is worse than it looks in the movies, so I’m not going.

I could hit the road a la Nomadland, and have a smaller space to maintain — but then I’d have to worry the van will konk out.

Ultimately, my dream is to have enough moolah to pay someone else for all the work. Currently, I only pay for what I can’t do myself or what might kill me, i.e. electrical.

Short a rosy future tossing Benjamins at tradesmen— highly unlikely, given my only means of getting rich is winning Mega Millions and writing on Medium — I might apply for my coveted dream job of paint poet.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to name shades?

February Drizzle. Fresh Marmite. Trump-In-Prison.

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Jean Campbell recently started her first Substack newsletter to laser focus on getting her book, City of Lies: A Street Hustler’s Omaha Journey published.