Paint It Black

My Gym, My Haven:  I call the color scheme "Murder-n-Mourning."

Well, Friends, I took on a Project the other day.  If you're on my crazy-train over on the Facebook, you got a front-row seat.  If not, you'll get the commentary today.

I took it upon myself to paint the cupboards in my gym a hip-n-happenin' black and red.  They were white, as you can see in the pictures.  My Grandpy built me those cupboards for my bathroom in the old house we lived in.  When we moved to our current house, there wasn't a place for the cupboards in any bathroom, but they make excellent storage for my gym.  They just needed some sprucing up, is all.

Don't you know I figured on this being a project that would take a couple hours at most, once I got all the junk out of those cupboards?  I started just before noon on Wednesday, since I knew I'd have a Rest Day and not need to use the gym at all yesterday.  I had to run to school to pick up Zoe's personal items and be home in time for tele-therapy, and thought the Rest Day would be a good opportunity for my paint to get good-n-dry.

Don't you know that I was feeling very disheartened when I glanced at the clock to see 2:00 PM, and I didn't even have any black on the pieces yet?  I was still fiddling around, getting the red good and covered.  I had some pratfalls with my paintbrushes.  I ended up with more red paint on my white Tyvek suit and also on the cement floor than I actually got on the shelves, I'm pretty sure.  At least the paint covered a lot better on my suit and the floor than it did on the surfaces I was trying to cover!

I was super-past the Point of No Return, though.  I'd already torn my gym up.  There was stuff from the cupboards strewn all over my floor-surface.  The insides of the cupboards were already painted and tacky, so I wouldn't have been able to just load everything back in and blithely gone about my workout Thursday morning.  Also, the outsides of the cabinets, which I planned on painting black anyway, looked like they were extras in a slasher film, with all the red paint spattered all over them.

Seriously- I am the most slather-ass painter in the history of forever.  I *had* a dropcloth put down to protect my vinyl floor tiles.  I should have had a dropcloth the size of a circus tent to protect everything else.

Once I had the black paint out, I decided that the green sheetrock wall behind the shorter cabinet was so fugly I couldn't look at it another day, and I learned from watching Christopher Lowell in the '90s on HGTV that if you want to make something disappear, you paint it black.  So I elected to paint that wall black before I even did anything with the cupboard outsides.

That little enterprise earned me some gorgeous jet-black glossy freckles on my face and neck and also in my hair just a little bit.  That was the fact after which I remembered the Tyvek suit had a hood.  I'm book-smart, but sometimes I'm tragically short on common sense.

Anyway.  That wall covered in glossy black paint, which doesn't let any of its sins hide, actually looked pretty darn good.  Good enough to give me a second wind so I could loop through and get the outsides of those cupboards turned from white to black.  It was a multi-step process. I had to let the paint dry enough between coats so that my brush wouldn't pick the last coat back up, but my need for instant gratification and for this project not to take so far over a "coupla hours" had me painting the outside of one cupboard, moving to the next, giving the Formerly Fugly Wall a little roll with the paint, then I'd start again with the first cabinet.  I had all my Breeze Matrix fans blowing on the wet paint.  It was latex paint.  I thought it at least dried to tacky satisfyingly quick.

After a few pauses for being dramatic and documenting the bloodying of my Tyvek Suit for The Book Of Faces to see, I dragged my butt up the stairs at quarter past six in the evening.  The paint wasn't dry on my cabinets, but at least there was new paint on them.  They looked pretty sharp.  The Formerly Fugly Wall looked pretty sharp.  I was sort of pleased with myself for a Job Well Done that I started and saw through to the end, even if the paint fumes had started to get to me a bit.  It was latex paint, but still.  That's some smelly stuff.

Even though I underestimated how long painting a couple cabinets and a small wall would take me, and I overestimated how much I'm capable of doing in a few short hours, I really needed a victory like deciding to do a project, taking steps to get the project done, and seeing the project through to the end.  I accomplished that.  Last night, I got everything back on the shelves, minus a garbage bag full of junk I was keeping in there because I don't even know why.  It was easier to hang onto it rather than throw it out, I guess.  I have extra shelves now!

I wound up with my hands and forearms to my elbows covered in red and black paint, which, in my heightened state from the paint fumes and my outsized sense of Over It, I dubbed the paint scheme "Murder and Mourning."  I think it's hilarious.

I don't think I'm going to take on another Paint Project anytime soon, though.  They're like at least two big projects in one, because you have the mess from unloading whatever you're painting, then the mess from the painting, then the waiting to get things put back together, and finally executing getting things put back together.  I do need to attack my pantry cupboard in the kitchen.  Well, the kitchen cupboards in general need a blitzkrieg to rip through them and jettison anything out of date or that doesn't serve me anymore.  I have a lot of damn stuff in this house that I've been holding onto because I thought it was too much trouble to go through and make decisions on getting rid of.  I think I could get through going through the kitchen with less drama, because there's just the mess of dragging everything out, then putting what's left back in place.  I could make the Point of No Return smaller.  Leave every segment of the process on a high note, so I'll want to come back and do more segments.

It's all about managing my own expectations, Friends.  Estimating that a job will take twice as long as it really does. That way I won't think it's quite so tragic when my hour-long project turns into an all-dayer.  If you take on any Big Projects today or this weekend, learn from your pal April's mistake and manage your expectations about how long it will realistically take, what you can realistically do.  Accept that that's Enough.  And get crackalackin'!