Previously… on "That Damn Muse"...
In the great tradition of cliffhangers the world over, last week I left you, my loyal readers, in the lurch, and for that I heartily laugh my ass off. I feel so successful, so manipulative. I feel the tremendous power that an author has with regards to her audience. And I also feel a bit like Sally Field every time I get an email begging me to resolve the open question from last week (you like me! You really like me!).
Therefore, this week I'll be revealing the answer to that age-old question that's been hounding you all week. How'd the bathroom turn out?
Before I begin the saga, let me assure you that I still really don't know. Right now it's still unfinished because I've been afraid most of the week to go in there and do any more work. The fact of the matter is that there's a clear Murphy's law in effect when you own a house. And the effect goes something like, "Multiply any time estimate to do a job by a factor of 10 and you'll still have vastly underestimated how long the job will actually take." This is due to the related law "Nothing is easy."
So, for example, if you want to hang some curtains, rest assured that even with an electric drill, all the right hardware, a cordless screwdriver, a ladder the right height and clear instructions in plain English, it will still take you 17 hours to successfully hang the curtains. This is because the Stupid Idiot Who Owned the House Before You Did ™ will have done something so insane to the window frame that it is now impossible for anyone to hang curtains without first spending some serious time with the good folks at the Home Depot "Fix What That Moron Did" department. That's why there were no curtains there when you showed up. It was a warning.
But I don't look for the warning signs very well, I guess. I just plunge in where the intelligent fear to tread. My old house was packed to the rafters with little traps like the one outlined above. Simple things like swapping out an old heating vent on the hall wall turned into a major lesson in rebuilding wallboard, as the original vent was holding on by a thread, and the second I removed it the wall around it crumbled. The guy who owned the house before I did was really into doing everything himself and he was also terrifically cheap and, it appears, tremendously impatient, because every job was done in such a half-assed way as to make fixing it an enormous pain in the neck.
I really hoped that by moving I was going to at least get away from the dipshit factor a tiny bit. I realize that when you buy a house you're just inheriting someone else's problems, but I figured that nobody could be worse than the guy who worked on my old house.
Well, duh. The guy who worked on our current house, whom we have dubbed "Uncle Foozbah" because we know from the real estate agent that he was someone's uncle or brother or something, was even more ambitious, and, if possible, cheaper. This is why we have pale pink tile throughout our house - my guess is that it was on sale. He did a lousy job installing it, too. He never sealed the grout, for instance. Thus if our bathtub runs over by even the tiniest amount, the water drips through the ceiling to the first floor.
You can imagine that I don't take baths now that I know this. I stick to the shower and am very careful on the tiles.
If you're a homeowner, I beg you - please only try those do-it-yourself projects within the realm of your expertise! Do not install your own windows if you've had no experience! Do not pour concrete if the furthest you've gone in construction is hanging a picture! I know you're filled with the spirit of Bob Villa and I know the idea of not having a landlord breathing down your neck and telling you what you can and cannot do to your living space is incredibly liberating, but please strongly consider the possibility that the presence of a landlord in the past has prevented you from doing something incredibly stupid and expensive to fix! It's possible.
Even painting seems to be a problem for some people. Uncle Foozbah is a prime example. For some unfathomable reason, he painted the entire interior of the house - walls, ceilings, everything - with white semi-gloss latex. If you don't know what that means, it means that every wall in the house is shiny. Easy to clean - very easy to clean - but shiny in the same way that your doorframes are shiny. Semi-gloss should be used on trim, basically. Not on your walls.
Foozbah apparently put this semi-gloss latex paint on over an old coat of oil-based paint. Now if you're not familiar with latex (those of you, say, who are not in the underground S&M scene in San Francisco) let me 'splain something to you. Latex peels when you apply it over oily things. Maybe not immediately, but it doesn't stick well to the oily thing and a small tug will separate the two fairly easily. That's why people can use it to paint their skin and then still go to work the next day without paint all over themselves. After it dries, latex forms a sheet that you can just pull right away - a neat effect if you're into the second skin look.
But if you paint latex directly over oil based paint without priming it? And you don't bother to tell anyone so they go merrily ahead and paint again? Well, when they remove the tape they used to protect the walls from the green paint they were using on the ceiling (just for an example), the latex issues a divorce decree with the ceiling and just slides right off. Along with the new green paint just applied to the ceiling. Everything comes off in sheets, but not complete sheets. The person in question (who, if you haven't figured it out yet, was me, last week) has to stand there and peel the paint off the ceiling by hand and then start all over again.
And let me tell you something. They will hate you.
So there I was, spending two hours peeling dime sized sections of half dried Jolly-Green-Giant colored latex off my bathroom ceiling, cursing Uncle Foozbah and trying not to bump into the doorframe, which was wet in preparation for leopard print stenciling later. I still haven't gotten to the stenciling. After I'd removed the peeling paint and then painted again, I was woozy from latex fumes and really sick of being in the bathroom. I hated the bathroom. I hated Uncle Foozbah. I hated whoever invented paint and I completely and utterly hated my creativity muse because that bitch was really responsible for getting me into trouble in the first place.
The next time I get creative, could someone just give me a strong sedative and send me to bed until it passes? It'll save us all a lot of heartache.
After a week of heavy drinking to ease the pain of having bright green paint imbedded under my fingernails, I was ready to tackle the rest of the bathroom (I feel like Paul Harvey. "And now? The rest... of the bathroom"). I hung the wallpaper border this morning and against all odds it's sticking successfully. I lined up the pattern correctly and now there's a lovely parade of jungle animals festooning the walls in an endless circle of life. Other than the stink of wallpaper paste, all is right in the bathroom.
Well, except for the fact that I'm nowhere near done in there. I still have to stencil and hang stuff, and of course I have to staple-gun all the fake greenery to the ceiling. But I can't really do that until the wallpaper dries because the smell is God-awful and gives me a headache. So I think I'm done for another week.
At least that's what I'm going to tell Dave. You can't rush these things, you know. The muse is touchy and it's best to keep her appeased. If you don't, God only knows what she'd come up with.
- KNP March 9, 2003
Pictures of the project - you know you want to see 'em!
