I can’t remember where I read this, but I once read that after a woman gives birth, something happens chemically in her body where she somehow forgets the pain she went through with the whole being in labor thing and suddenly wants to have children again. I’m pretty sure the body excretes a similar chemical to make you forget how painful, time consuming and utterly exhausting home improvement projects are.
read more ↓When I first moved into my current home two years ago, it was pink and purple. Obviously that had to be remedied immediately, so I painted it mint green and light blue. After a year of felling like I was living in a mental institution, my path crossed a feng shui expert who took my expectations of what a home should look and feel like, and turned them upside down. This time last year I decided it would be simple to paint my living room, bedroom, closet and bathroom. In one weekend. By myself. Did I mention that each room needed at least two coats of paint? After that excursion I swore that I was done with home improvements.
And then I came home from… well, everywhere, and I looked at my place and thought, “Who lives here?” Not just because I hadn’t been home in, oh, four months, but… I don’t know. Something about the place just felt off. And I decided the best way to remedy this was to refinish my kitchen cabinets, which were an oddly clinical white on white, greatly contrasting the richness of the purple walls. And I decided that if I were refinishing my kitchen cabinets, I might as well do my hall cabinets too – also white on white. not meshing well with slate. And if I were doing my hall cabinets, was it really that big a deal to add on my bathroom cabinets… which were, you guessed it, white on white?
Short answer? Yes. Long answer? Here goes.
I think my place was built in the 70s or so, which means my cupboards – or “cabinets, because you’re in America now,” as Adam puts it – are a combination of a wood frame and pressboard doors. This sucks. And the reason why this sucks is because you can’t just strip the paint off and stain them, because unpainted, raw pressboard is ugly. So I was disappointed when I realized I’d have to just strip the frame and paint my doors a different color.
As per my feng shuiing, my options for painting my kitchen doors were as follows:
• Red.
• Orange.
• Yellow.
• Purple.
Bear in mind that my kitchen is already a shade of purple that is relatively cartoonish, so painting the doors red, yellow or orange would somehow be goofy. I flirted with the idea of painting the frames purple as well, making my kitchen one uniform color from ceiling to floor… but even that was a bit too creepy for me. So purple doors to match the purple walls and a warm, walnutty wood tone for the frames would have to suffice. The hall was getting much the same treatment, with yellowish-gold on wood, and the bathroom was black on wood.
Naively, I thought all I had to do was strip off the paint and get rid of the straggly remnants, then voila! New cupboards! Yeah… no. Me being completely green in the ways of cupboard finishing, I soon realized this was only a tiny fraction of the equation.
See, what actually happens is on Wednesday you spend your entire day cursing at the tenant who lived there before you, because the fact that they painted over the screws on the doors makes them almost impossible to remove. And then you painstakingly apply toxic paint stripper on everything, including yourself by accident, and give yourself a couple charming chemical burns. This tends to happen as you scrub ferociously at the frames with a little plastic scraper and a scrubbie and little chunks of toxicity fly everywhere. Finally, you admit to yourself you’re going to have to do this twice – once isn’t enough to get the white paint off.
So on Thursday you go for coffee with a friend and chat about the world for a bit, then race off to borrow a power sander because you realize that you have no desire to spend the next three months channeling Daniel Laruso as you attempt to sand off the last of the paint and old finish. It takes longer than you think it will. Much longer. To the point where your hand cramps and it makes you want to cry. And because you feel like it would take too much time to remove absolutely everything from your cabinets, you remove only a few things – like some plates and glasses – and leave other things behind to get covered in sawdust, reasoning that you’ll clean it later.You consider sleeping in the kitchen so you can get started faster in the morning. You think better of it and go to bed.
By Friday you’ve decided come hell or high water, you’re going to finish sanding by noon. All the hard stuff is over, so you just tear ass through finishing each of the frames – first with 100 grade sandpaper, then with 120. You finish by 3. You realize that sometime in between now and Wednesday your place became war-torn, with glasses on the couch, drawers on the coffee table, and an inch-thick layer of dust on top of everything. After a quick break you decide to focus some time on painting 22 doors and nine drawers, and as they dry, you start staining. You don’t stop until everything has been stained and wiped down, then collapse into bed, exhausted.
After dreams of varnish cans sprouting legs and chasing after you shake you awake on Saturday, you realize you’re in the home stretch and put on the first coat of gloss. Then you start the second coat on the doors. Then you lightly sand the frames. Then you apply another coat of gloss. Then you do another coat on the doors, this time getting the edges and backsides. Collapse, bed, exhausted.
Then, Sunday. The hall doors go back on the frames. Somehow they don’t match up the same way they used to. You say, “Screw it, I’ll deal with it later.” You then nap. Painting another layer on the inside of cabinet doors after you awake, you realize your snot has taken on a gritty, sand-like quality – despite the face mask you wore – as you blow your nose and feel as though razor blades are shooting through your nostrils. Phantom half moon-shaped bruises have appeared on your legs. You have another nap. After dinner, you decide it’s time to put all the kitchen doors back on, even though they’re not finished, but you’re sick of seeing them on your living room floor. (Never mind that the hall doors are still hanging crooked. You’ll deal with it later.) You then attempt to futz with the bathroom doors and put a screwdriver through your thumb. As you're dressing the wound, you become aware that you've rubbed the skin off your first knuckle during all your sanding. You discover this because rubbing alcohol gets in the wound. You go to bed.
And now it’s Tuesday. I still haven’t rehung the hall doors, the bathroom doors are dusty but in their places, and the kitchen edging still needs to be done, as do the inside of the kitchen doors… but you know, the place looks damn good. I’m quite proud of myself. I just swear that I will never do anything like this again.
Ev. Er.
(Riiiiiiight.)
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