Paint

(yet another AI image. I don’t wear overalls or gloves but I do get covered in paint.)

Paint. It’s a sure sign that the end is near. How could you not like that? By the time paint is bought, walls have been hung and sanded and repaired and primed. So why do I dislike painting so much?

Painting is like golf but way less fun. It takes the same amount of time to knock out four walls and a ceiling as it does the trimming of those walls and windows in the same way that a 300- yard drive counts the same as a two- foot putt. It's also a job that is accessible to all in such a way that I feel like a schmuck if I pay someone else to do it. It’s like paying to have your lawn mowed; what you are buying is time. 

There are exceptions. High elevation painting can involve risk of death, and I don’t mind paying someone else to put their neck on the line in my place. Especially with exteriors. I don’t mess around near the electrical meter. And there is definitely more that can go wrong in terms of the quality of the finished job on an exterior. 

Once the painting has actually started it’s like a coloring book from the good old days. You start by tracing all the lines and fill in from there. The bit that I refuse to do, and that professional painters refuse to do, is tape. I could probably make a case that painter’s tape is actually more futile than the cleaning steps and that’s because it is. Some say they can’t keep paint off the trim or ceiling without tape. 

We say this can be learned. It’s the same way you approach a cliff: slowly, and toes first. You’ll want a good brush with a nice stiff edge, wet with paint on the side facing the wall only. Start away from your corner or trim and inch forward in a swoop. Once you’re there, keep a steady hand and keep pushing that small amount of paint along the edge. When the wall starts to show through your new painted line, reload and swoop in again.

The trimming out of walls is tedious and so worth it. It’s especially worth it if you’re a team of two and one person is trimming out walls and the other is rolling the big areas. Neither can exist without the other; it’s like a good marriage. Which brings me to my wife. 

My wife, Megan, completes many essential roles in our painting projects. Foremost among them is choosing colors. She’ll spend weeks or months studying colors in the context of a room and in conjunction with one another, consulting me just to humor herself because she knows my eye for color is about as nuanced as the sport of bowling which is—- no offense to bowlers—- not very nuanced. I do try. I just can’t see what she sees. If I do select a color, which I try not to do, she will sometimes gently point out why I’m wrong in this selection and I’ll accept her judgement unconditionally. 

Except when it comes to beige. I got beiged to death along with the rest of the world a couple decades ago and I’m still recovering. We all moved on to grays but then gray became the scapegoat for all flips regardless of whether or not the flips were done with integrity and care. I’m coming out of the gray phase due to societal pressures and now I default to my tried and true hue: blue.

To look at my closet is to garner a snapshot in chromatic monogamy. I am blue through and through. I’ve often wondered the extent to which color influences my choice in sports teams but I can tell you that they’re all blue, and also that one of my sons goes to Indiana University and I own not a single IU garment (and not because I don’t love the school because I do.) Megan knows this about me and does try to steer me to other colors, namely by buying me shirts that aren’t blue (but never, ever red.)

The next problem that my wife solves for me is the Groundhog Day situation I find myself in every time I go to buy paint: the sticker shock. Even though I should know better by now, I don’t. Just last week I bought cheap primer that was such poor quality that I returned it 20% gone. Megan solves this problem by only buying the best paint that money can buy. It works out great. She buys it and I don’t ask. And lo and behold, it goes on clean and the finish never disappoints. At the same time we’ve forged a friendship with our local merchant that has done us many solids in return for loyal patronage. 

There’s no question that with paint you get what you pay for. It’s not worth the frustration to try and save on paint. You’ll apply fewer coats with a better product and possibly save money for not needing more than two. The moral of the story is don’t be like me. Send someone not like me to the paint store, ask no questions and get going on it. 

One of my favorite topics is surface preparation. Paint is no more capable of covering up a poor surface than any other material and is often less likely to do so. Small irregularities will be magnified by paint. For instance, a nail or screw hole in drywall will, when removed, leave more than a hole; there will be a raised edge, sort of like a tiny volcano, if the drywall got disfigured by the creation of the hole. In this case it’s best to remove all of it. I use a utility to cut a tiny square around the nail hole so that nothing is up above the surface of the wall and then fill it in with spackle or drywall mud. It will need at least two and often three coats of the filler, with light sanding in between, in order to disappear. And before painting, it must be primed. If you paint directly over a filled hole the surface will appear unnaturally smooth compared to the rest of the wall. 

It doesn’t really matter whether you use a dedicated hole filler like “Fast and Final” or just regular drywall mud. As the name implies the first one might be ready to paint sooner, but it’s sold in some impossibly small container that will be a hundred times more expensive than drywall mud. Whenever I buy a container of that stuff, I use it and what’s left (90% of it usually) gets stuck on the shelf and dries out. I always have a bucket of drywall mud on hand and it lasts a very long time so long as the lid isn’t left loose, as some careless heathen may do (yes, that’s been me as well.) Whatever product you use you can’t assume that any imperfections on a wall will improve with a coat of paint. They’ll only improve in the sense that they’ll be the same color as the rest of the wall. 

I don’t love or hate painting but like other messy tasks, it’s so key to clean your tools well after use. A wet roller can be wrapped up snugly with a plastic bag and it will be ready to go the next day (or even a few days later.) Brushes can be stored in the same way, and if you’ve got a couple brushes going with different colors you very well may want to wrap them up in plastic for short term storage. But when you’re done with a brush they need to be rinsed really well or else they’ll be ruined next time, streaked with dried paint. The best way to rinse a brush is by holding it tips up directly under running water. If it’s not cold out I always do this out in the yard. 

The best thing about paint is when it’s done. It’s got more transformative power per square foot per dollar than anything else. And given that it’s an easy skill to master, we should all paint more walls with more interesting colors. Just make sure someone who can see colors is the one choosing the colors.