I love painting – ceramics, maybe even spray painting a wicker basket or two, but the real test came when my mom asked me to paint her porch. She had it enclosed circa late 70s and hasn’t had anything done to it since then. One day a couple of weeks ago, she noticed a musky smell coming from one of the carpets she had put over the original porch floor. (She had two – one over the other.) She called a handyman to come and replace the carpeting with ceramic tile. It looked nice, she said. “But now, the paneling looks blah, don’t you think?” Those vertical seams just didn’t seem to show off her pretty new floor. So, she was back on the phone with the handyman again. This time to see what could be done with the walls. (I think he suggested ripping out the warped paneling and using something more solid and quoted her a price.) She decided it was more than her checkbook could afford and asked me to paint it instead. Sure, I said, no problem. After all, how hard could it be?

We decided on a cool, soft mint color (to make the room seem bigger) and bought all the brushes, rollers, scrapers, pans, tape, tarp and every other little gadget that the sales clerk thought might come in useful for someone who has never painted a wall, much less a room, before. “Do you need a ladder?” he asked politely. “No need, I said. “The ceiling is only eight feet and I have a step stool. (Now let’s stop here a moment to do some math. The ceiling is eight feet high. I am five feet tall. The step stool is 12 inches high. . . Oh, that should be plenty even if I have to stand on tip-toe to do the edging.)

Well, the first thing I had to do was prime everything. And those little vertical seams between the paneling? Every single one needed special attention to get the sealer into them – what a painstaking effort that was. Okay, after about 4 hours, everything was primed and sealed – even the ceiling. Now when someone paints a ceiling white over primer, unless you have an eye for it, white on white looks pretty good, unless you miss spots like I did. Back over the ceiling with the extended wand brush. I guess I had too much paint on the roller because little white droplets dripped on my face and hair. (I didn’t have enough sense to wear a cap or bandana.) Okay, another hour went by. By now it was 3 o’clock – five hours since I’d started and the walls and trim were still waiting for that soft, pleasant mint green.