Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Canary Green

Right now, our guest room is a weird shade of canary yellow. In the daylight at least it is yellow.... dark, bright yellow. But at night something happens. When you turn on the light, the room looks like it is neon green. It is truly an ugly color. U*G*L*Y, ugly. seriously.

So right now I am painting. Not right now, persay, at 4:00 a.m.....nope, right now, I am recovering, but earlier I was painting, and while I could make this post a million paragraphs and bore you to tears, I will keep it short and sweet and explain why I was painting at 3 in the morning, and what I am recovering from.

As practical as it would be to paint the guest room (because it is u*g*l*y) I am painting the "boys room". We have never really done anything for poor Joey since we moved in. No paint, no pictures, no time, no nothing!! So since we found out we were having another boy we decided to boy it out!! Blues and greens and bright and colorful and I can't wait to show it off when it is finished. Which is not now.

I'd like to be finished by Wed. Right now, I have the entire walk in closet finished (which was hard because it was dark blue and had to be primed and painted twice (thanks for your help Lexie!!!). I have 2 walls painted completely, trim and all and I was priming the remaining 2 tonight when..... after using 1/2 a 2 gallon bucket on one wall I finally figured out why it was SUCKING in the primer. Someone at some point had glued up a GIANT picture mural (actually Matt ended up figuring this out, which is why I am writing this post). I primed and primed and finally used up all the primer (hello Home Depot again tomorrow *sigh*), when I noticed that the wall was starting to bubble. oh crap. Literally there are these giant air bubbles forming under a layer (that we thought was plaster!) ALL over this wall. Turns out someone had painted over this wallpapery-picture kind of thing, with some kind of textured paint or something. There was no way to even tell that this had been done. So the wall is molting off in front of my eyes....

oh crap.
oh crap.
oh crap.

Did I mention that I am having company on Friday and I don't have time for this (hey Sus! I'm sure we'll have this under control by then... hehehe) and I would really really REALLY like to be done by Wednesday!

OH CRAP!

So I called Matt in and through the course of discussion....and a little peeling it obviously cannot stay on the wall. Matt has his last final for the semester tomorrow (well, today now) and has been working like a dog and is EXHAUSTED and trying to advise me with what to do..... Finally instead of watching me pull and and scrape and try not to cry at the HUGE SETBACK, he gets on some work clothes and does the hardest scraping for me, for 45 minutes. At 2:30 in the morning. When he could be sleeping.

Did I mention that today on Home Depot run #73 I locked the keys in the car with the diaper bag, and myself and Joey out of the car. Matt was in the city, at a final and left to race back home and let me in the car and then back to class to present his portfolio.

I'm not sure what is going to happen with that wall tomorrow. I'm not sure what is going to happen with that wall in the next 3 days. I'm not sure why someone would paint over wallpaper, or door hinges, electrical sockets, or window latches, but I won't go down that path right now. I'm especially not sure what I did to deserve a husband as dedicated and loving as I ended up with. I'm not sure that I could have left my final exam and driven to help him in the same scenario. I'm also not sure that I would have forsaken sleep (had I been as tired as he is/was) to help with a project that could have been abandoned until the next day.

What I am sure of, is that Matt is truly loving me "as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her." Ephesians 5:25 He is giving up his own needs and desires and taking, in their place, my own. So instead of sitting here and thinking about my 3 great walls and 1 DISASTER wall, downstairs, I am thinking about Christ, how He loved His children, and how my husband is able to love me. I didn't ask him to come save me at Home Depot, or to help me tear apart a wall. He just saw my need, and treated it as his own.

My prayer tonight (along with extra rest that I won't get from a full night's sleep) is that somehow through my actions, someone will think of Christ and how He gave himself up for us all. I hope I can learn something from Matt tonight because I think that his sacrifices for me, will mean more to me and last longer than whatever ends up on that wall. (if it even sticks)

Thanks for listening, and think of Matt today (Tuesday as he finishes his last final, which he has juggled while giving me a sweet mother's day and wonderful birthday, all in the same week).

And Mom, and Dad, and Kay and Tom..... (and all you other family and friends who will darken our doorway this summer). I'm really sorry about the canary neon green guest room walls. They are still going to be canary neon green. Because it scares me so much to think about what might be under them!! And I don't think I am going to be doing any painting (scraping, sanding, cutting, spackling, edging, priming, climbing, or anything else) for some time.

Embrace the ugly!

5 comments:

Susannah Forshey said...

Aww....I'm so sorry about your home reno trials! I know (very, very well) how horrible that can be. I have seen beautiful striped, perfectly aligned wallpaper crinkle and rip, as the ancient plaster walls rise and fall in summer heat and winter cold. :( It is a heartbreaking sight! I also had my bedroom ceiling fall in on me on New Years' Day! :D Not to mention watching plaster walls flake off onto my roller as I painted....and numerous other disasters.

Of course, I'm delighted to do whatever I can do to help, Laurie....I adore painting and interior decorating. :) Did every room in my house--twice! Ooo, let me help, let me help! :D

Matt and Laurie Beardsley said...

Thanks Susi, it's such an awful mess. Some of the walls are plaster, that made sense to us, but this wall that had the terrible print picture monstrosity glued to it, isn't drywall, sheetrock or plaster. We don't really know what we are going to be sanding and painting...what, I am going to be sanding and painting today. *sigh*

But by golly, it's going to get done!

lislynn said...

Oh man, I hear ya.

The Sinks said...

As entertaining as this post was, I know it is anything but that for you! I'm glad you saw God in the midst of it all, and hope that you can get it figured out soon! And I second your frustration over previous owners who painted over/around things. We had to sand some walls in our house too because of the kind of paint they used (not to mention the fact that they just painted around the curtain rods hanging up, etc.). Sheesh!

Unknown said...

Come on Matt and Laurie Home Depot??? Find a Lowe's and support me.