I could explain to you that the average world citizen’s worldview is too narrow. Muse about the reasons many exalt the worst sort of tripe while they execrate the most sublime sort of art. I might point out the frauds and mountebanks that flense extravagant slices of notoriety from the beached whale carcass of celebrity nowadays. I could even dissect and analyze to the nth degree bits of the Zeitgeist, and discomfit you by making you notice how shabby the trappings of your popular culture are.
But I’m not going to. I’ll just mention that the world is full of marvels and wonders, and I adore swimming through its limpid digital pools. My world is big enough because this guy (?) is in it. So I’ll let him speak for himself. He explains his video thusly:
The bosom oak it is and performing the pop with the ukulele
I’m gonna qualify for Medicaid by the time I finish writing about this, so let’s put a fork in it today, what do you say? Let’s fix the floor:
The bedroom is that rarest of things. It has natural light available from three directions. So we can afford to make the floor dark, to give it a quiet look and a visual weight. That, and there’s no way I’m ever going to drag the 200 pound rental drum sander up the stair to properly sand it before I finish it, and dark covers a multitude of sins. So we play it as it lays, as they say in golf, referring to hitting your ball from the spot you kicked it to when no one was looking.
Lacquer thinner and coarse steel wool will remove the mill stamps identifying the grade and species of wood and the occasional whoopsie my wife made with her warpaint. That’s it for preparation, but what the hell; the purpose of a pine plank floor is to look old and a little rough, so it’ll be kosher right from the get-go. Now for the miracle fluid.
Shellac. Magic stuff. It’s the residue left on a tree from the lac bug, gathered and dissolved in denatured alcohol. It sticks to anything. Anything sticks to it. Dries almost immediately. It dries in low temperatures. No matter how much you thin it, it still makes a coherent film. I root around in my stash of old fashioned but still state of the art liquid aniline dyes, and find Dark Walnut. Yeah baby. 100 drops per quart of shellac, two quarts of shellac will do it, and a big slug of alcohol. The alcohol goes in the shellac, not the shellacker. Never drink while you work. Never. Guys named “Lefty” or “Stumpy Joe” drink while they work.
By the time you reach the end of the plank, the end you started at is dry, so you’ve got to be brave. Stop to wipe your brow, and it’ll splotch. Give it a few minutes, and go back over it with clear low lustre water based polyurethane, and let that dry for an hour or so. And it’s done.
Alright, we finished about a third of the floor, and half the walls and trim on Saturday night. Sunday, we move the furniture onto the floor that’s finished and I begin… to think about the Patriots game. Must go faster!
It’s wide open spaces now, so it’s easier to work. There’s a lot of woodwork, but we’re not moving the furniture twice, so I do it all as we go, more or less. We’re ready to do the remainder of the floor by late afternoon. I shellac the floor, and hey, it’s 6-0 Bengals!
I admit it. I stopped and watched the last two quarters of the Pats game. Take that Cincy!
Back upstairs, and recoat the floor with the polyurethane, and sleep in the den a second night. Monday morning, we put the furniture back, with about half of it removed. Addition by subtraction. Here’s before and after in the front of the house:
Everybody has a built in paneled headboard with integral windows, don’t they? And my wife’s favorite place now, least favorite place before:
I told you the red chair would work. I even threw in a sale-able piece of furniture, a Shamrock Table, because my wife is swell, and deserves it. That, and I had one.
Well, there you have it. I’ve got to wait for a hard frost to kill the mosquitoes, and then I can take the screens out and paint the window sashes. The closets need painting, and I’ll do it at the same time.
I remember Columbus Day because I used to play music in a hundred and one bands anyone that would have me and try to make money to eat and get cigarettes and I don’t smoke and there still was never enough money and I played at a tee-totaling biker association party for two members’ wedding not gay a man and a woman that arrived on a motorcycle with the woman I think wearing a white Wedding Dress and no helmet and we played for one hundred sober bikers and ninety-nine of them were like accountants and one was like a serial murderer but they all looked exactly the same so you had to assume they all would kill you if they got the chance instead of the more likely thing that they’d do your taxes if you asked nice and I never played Born To Be Wild for a Wedding Song before and the bride’s father was in jail I think so she had to dance with the groom twice and the whole thing was held at the Italian-American Club on Gano Street in Providence but everybody calls it Guano Street for a joke haha and it’s a real long time ago but it might have been the Portuguese-American Club I don’t remember but I do remember it was Columbus Day and I went into the bar to get away from the sober biker accountants and that one serial murderer that were in the function room and it didn’t matter if it was the Italian-American Club or the Portuguese-American Club or the Knights Of Columbus Hall haha that would be funny but I don’t really remember but I distinctly remember a guy with a knife a real knife not a just a knife a dagger that came to a perfect point and didn’t fold or look like you could do anything wholesome with it it just looked one hundred percent like it was designed and made to gut a bass player and that guy held that knife right under my chin and explained to me in Portuguese that Cristobal Colon was Portuguese and don’t you forget it and my Spanish was very sketchy and Portuguese sounds like Russian to me not Spanish anyway but believe me I understood every damn word he said and I advise you all to answer the question did you know Cristobal Colon was Portuguese in the affirmative at all times.
[Editor’s Note: If you just stumbled in, we’re redecorating the master bedroom in a day and a half. ]
{Author’s Note: There is no editor, and this all happened two years ago.}
It took too long to make the paint. I have to finish enough of the room on Saturday to put all the assorted flotsam and jetsam in the room in the finished part and press on to the finish line on Sunday. But there’s a limit to just how crummy a job I’m willing to do, no matter what kind of hurry I’m in. So look above to see what we use to prepare for the actual work. Well, that and yeso. And a vacuum cleaner.
What’s yeso you ask? It’s plaster in spanish. Everything comes labeled in Espanol et Francais these days, and yeso is so much more fun to say than plaster, so we go with it.
Here’s the room: Please note that the floor is not finished either. Now, you pikers were wondering if I could repaint my bedroom in a day and a half. My indifference to your doubts can scarce be measured. If all I had to do was paint it, I’d be drunk by now. I’ve got to finish the floor, too.
You see, my wife and I suffered mightily to get our home. My wife, mostly. And we had to move into our Master Bedroom before it was complete, because the bedroom we had been sleeping in down the hall was promised to another family member, and that’s that. Hell, before we even had that room, the whole upstairs in our house was unfinished; and when we moved into our house at first, me, my wife, two cats, and eventually an infant slept in the room I’m currently typing this essay in. Cozy. So my wife never complained about this floor not being finished, because there was so much more floor than before that she hardly cared.
That’s pine plank flooring, screwed and pegged. Our whole house has it, except for ceramic tile in the bathrooms and kitchens. Many people think it’s extravagant. It cost less than wall to wall carpet, that’s why I did it. There’s a lot of sweat equity in it, though. Anyway, we’re going to finish it too. You people still taking action on the likelihood of me finishing? Pull all the nails and hooks out of the walls. Remove the electrical cover plates. Lose all the screws. (Just kidding. Put the screws back in the electrical outlets after you remove the plates, or you’re fired) Mix a little yeso powder in water, and when it’s a thick doughy paste, use your putty knife to fill all the nail holes. Don’t listen to morons who tell you to mound it up because it will shrink. Scraping wet plaster off the wall is easy. Sanding is hard. Fill the hole, scrape all excess off, and two minutes later the plaster will be hard and you can fill it again to take care of the shrinkage problem. (Insert George Costanza joke here)
Caulk all the seams where the woodwork meets the plaster. You’ll never get a good looking job without doing this. Fill nailholes in woodwork with Dap 33 putty if necessary. Not many in a repaint. Sand all the woodwork first, and your yeso patches after, with 220 grit sandpaper. Vacuum everything. Now vacuum everything again, you did a lousy job. Now we actually paint something.
What color is the trim going to be? The pinkish tone of the existing woodwork ain’t cutting it. I need something whiter, but not white. Hey, here’s a gallon of Benjamin Moore alkyd satin “White Dove.” White Dove is never called “White Dove” by the female customers. They call it “Dove White,” no matter how many times they hear it said or see it written “White Dove,” and Benjamin Moore should just give up and call it that. Old Ben throws a little earth tone in white, probably raw or burnt umber, and it makes a nice warm pale gray. And I have some. Warren G. Harding’s paint shaker to the rescue!
Use a natural bristle brush in a real paint pot (Never the can. Never.) Cut in (paint in a straight line) the crown moulding, and around the standing (vertical) moulding where it meets the walls. Leave the running (horizontal) moulding till you’ve painted the walls. Paint the baseboard after everything else because it’s dirty down there, no matter how many times you vacuum.
You’re supposed to let that dry overnight. Not bloody likely. Don’t get a lot on the walls, eat dinner, and go back and give the walls two coats of green with a synthetic bristle brush to cut in, and a roller for the field. Get everywhere you can reach now, because that’s where you’ve got to put the furniture tomorrow to get the rest of the room.
And don’t make a mess! The first sentence in the stipulations of any painting contract reads:
Protection of surfaces not to be painted.
Duh. If you’re making a mess, you’re doing it wrong.
You get two cracks at drawing a straight line where green meets white, and let me say a word about doing it.
I don’t have time to use adhesive tape to draw a straight line. The place the tape would go is covered in wet paint anyway. And if you go to the paint store, you’ll see one doogizmo after another being sold to allow you to cheat and achieve this straight line. Forget all of them, and the tape too.
People in recent memory generally had all sorts of hand skills and practical knowledge we are all oblivious to now. They could split wood properly, and sharpen a handsaw, and fix a two stroke engine, and limb trees, and all sorts of things that are lost in the mists of time for most of us now. But there are a few hand skills that any self respecting handy person should acquire. And painting a straight line between the wall and the ceiling or the wall and a doorframe should be one of them. You’ll go slow for a while, but you’ll get it. Me? I told you, I’m the Prince of Darkness.
It’s getting late on Saturday, and about 1/3 of the room is painted. What the hell am I going to do about the floor?
[Editor’s Note: If you just stumbled in, we’re redecorating the master bedroom in a day and a half. ] {Author’s Note: There is no editor, and this is a re-run from two years ago}
You don’t have 200 gallons of paint in your basement? Hmmm. See, I was toning it down, setting the bar low, because I used to have 400 gallons of paint in the basement. But I’ve cut way back. What do you people have in your basement, a ping pong table? A dungeon?
It’s hard to know what to keep these days. Most stuff you keep is worthless. You store it your whole lives and then your children put you in a home or a box and buy two dumpsters and whoops! It’s all gone.
My parents were children in the depression, and some of their pack-rat instincts linger in their children’s genes. Maybe that’s why I like Dean Martin records. No, that’s Rat-Pack instincts. That’s different.
What I mean is, poor people collect stuff. It’s wealthy people that are always droning on about achieving a zen-like simplicity in their affairs. They know they can cash a dividend check any time they want and buy a sailboat. Poor people always have, in the back of their minds, the niggling suspicion that _____ is the last ______ they’re ever going to see, so they better save it. I’ve succumbed to that urge myself.
I’m not as bad as my forebears, but I’m bad. It manifests itself in saving building materials with me. I’ve gotten better over the years, and the further removed from the Jimmy Carter presidency I get, the more sanguine I am that any given meal I get won’t be my last.
I’ve still got a lot of usable paint left over from when I was a contractor and bought it by the tympani load. So rule number one: let’s not go to the store and buy anything is made possible. Let’s make paint. You have a paint shaker that dates from the Warren G. Harding administration, don’t you? Makes things much easier. OK, here’s what you do. Pull all the flat, or very low sheen latex wall paint off the shelf. Find something that looks vaguely the color you want, but way too light. Just make sure you have almost enough to do the job right right from the get-go.
The bedroom walls are a sort of light buff color, with vertical stripes in a sort of light rose. The stripes are ragged. Not “ragged” as in Raggedy Andy, “ragged” as in “applied in a broken color glaze with a rag.” The wood trim (there’s a lot of it) is painted Ben Moore Antique White, a sort of pale, pale peach off-white. It’s kind of like an Edwardian drawing room motif.
In short, it’s @#$%ing pink, and I hate it like poison.
Instant decision: It’s going to be dark. Green. Warm color though, nothing acid. Not all the way to the olive everybody loves these days that will depress them in a few years. But a quiet, sort of somber green it is.
I’ve got a gallon and a half of light blue, a sort of watery sky color. Hideous. Let’s use that. Dump it in a five gallon pail after you shake it. If you don’t have a paint shaker, I’ll wait four weeks while you stir it with a paint paddle. That metal rod you see in the bucket is a heavy wire doogizmo you can chuck in your drill and speed things up. But you’ll have Charles Atlas forearms if you stir it all by hand. Your call. OK. Let’s say OK again. OK? Right. Now, let’s make the blue into green. You were in kindergarten, what do you add? Yaller is right. I’ve got a half gallon of screaming margarine yellow there, left over from Ray Charles’ house, so let’s dump that in. OK, it’s green now.
A dreadful, toothpaste green. Now what do you want to do?
This part’s easy. We’re angling to put a deep magenta red club chair in the room eventually, and we’re going to make sure it works in there right now, colorwise. I scan the rows of paint, and come up with a gem: Number 5 base means it’s as dark as a politicians heart. I scan the pigments written on the side. This will do. Super dark cranberry red. It matches the fabric on the chair fairly closely. I dump half a gallon into the toothpaste green.
There are only three colors; red, blue, and yellow. We’re throwing in the third now. The red and green are opposite one another on the color wheel, so they make a kind of mud brown, and calm and darken the thing right down. The yellow we chucked in is based on an earth yellow, not a nasty chrome yellow, so the warm tone stays, and makes the whole thing into a regal, calm, strong green. No one will ever know the red has been added, but the chair will magically look great in front of the wall. You’ll see. I’ve got two and a half gallons of it all together now. Plenty.
Now we must name it! Hmm.
I know! OK Green.
(To be continued tomorrow)
Month: October 2008
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
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