February 4, 2001
Cleaning up life's messes
___ We attempted to pass the mantle of home improvement at our house recently, but I'm fearful that responsibility is going to be thrown back at me.
___While I was guiding 114 Cub Scouts and parents on a three-day, two-night excursion aboard the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi, Alison stayed home with paint on her mind--and on her hands and clothes and hair.
___ She was determined to fix up the guest bathroom that's situated between our den and kitchen. My dad and I painted the adjacent hallway the week after Christmas. Wealso made a start on the bathroom, but not to anyone's satisfaction.
MARK WINGFIELD
___ For the first 26 years of our home's life, wallpaper decorated the walls of that bathroom. We agreed we wanted to change that, in no small part because our two young boys frequently use that bathroom and have not mastered the art of aiming. Painted walls do not absorb liquids as easily as wallpaper.
___Dad and I struggled to get the old wallpaper down, scraping and tugging for the better part of a day. Then we painted the trim a beautiful white.
___ After that, nothing seemed to work right. We painted the walls white, but the reflection in the small bathroom was blinding. Then we sponged other colors over the white, including some variations of yellow. That only made it look like the boys had abused the bathroom more than they have.
___Alison then declared the problem was a lack of texture on the walls. All the other painted walls in our house have been textured. But since these bathroom walls always had been wallpapered, they were smooth.
___ So before the boys and I left for Corpus, I bought her the supplies to texture the walls and didn't look back.
___ My parting words, which were reminiscent of what she has said to me so many times before, were, "I don't want to come home to a disaster."
___He's created plenty of disasters on his own. I'm usually smart enough not to even start something that's likely to end in disaster. But not this time.
___ As bad as the bathroom looked from our first two color attempts, I figured it wouldn't make much difference if I messed up--anything would be an improvement. And several of my friends had textured much larger spaces than this small bathroom, so surely I could handle this.
___ I managed to get the texture on, but despite my friends' assurances that it wasn't that difficult,it wasn't a piece of cake either. The end result was passable--nothing like the rest of the house, but passable. So on to the paint.
ALISON WINGFIELD
___ After agonizing over color swatches for several weeks, Mark and I finally had decided our best bet to combat the weird color tile (tan with brown swirls) was with a dark color. So I found this great "Renoir Red"--it even sounds pretty, doesn't it? I must admit I was taken with the name. And everyone who heard the color name oohed and aahed appropriately (or were they just humoring me?). Everyone except my dad, of course. His reaction was, "Red??"
___ The hardest part about painting with a dark color is if you mess up around a white ceiling, it really shows. And, boy, did I mess up around the white ceiling. Once I realized how bad it looked, I wasn't that careful, because I knew the ceiling would have to be repainted--by Mark.
___ When I was relating this to Mark, I made the excuse that at 5-foot-3-and-3/4 it was hard for me to reach the very top of the walls where they meet the ceiling, so I wasn't as precise as I would have liked. He asked me why I didn't use the stepladder. I replied, "That was WITH the stepladder, dear!"
___I did manage to keep his "beautiful white trim" fairly intact, although he is quick to point out every little aberration. So maybe the trim needs a tad of touch-up also.
___ Despite my dad's skepticism, the color looks good, and the bathroom should be ready for prime time--as soon as Mark cleans up my messes.
___Isn't that the way we go through life sometimes? We dive in headfirst, thinking we can conquer any problem, and then we find ourselves in one of life's little (or big) messes, asking God to white it out for us. God might not choose to get us out of any messes we've gotten into, but he does provide a whitewash for our messy souls.
PREVIOUS HE SAID/ SHE SAID COLUMNS:
1999: 6/16, 6/23, 6/30, 7/14, 7/21, 7/28, 8/4, 8/11, 8/18, 8/25, 9/1, 9/8, 9/15, 9/29, 10/6, 10/13, 10/20, 10/27 11/17, 11/24, 12/1, 12/8, 12/15, 12/22,
2000: 1/5, 1/19, 1/26, 2/2, 2/9, 2/16, 2/23, 3/1, 3/8, 3/22, 3/27, 4/3, 4/10, 4/17, 4/24, 5/1, 5/8, 5/15, 5/22, 5/29, 6/5, 6/12, 6/19, 6/26, 7/10, 6/26, 6/19, 7/17, 7/24, 7/31, 8/7, 8/14, 8/21, 8/28, 9/4, 9/11, 9/18, 9/25, 10/2, 10/9, 10/16, 11/6, 11/20, 11/27, 12/11.
2001: 1/1, 1/8, 1/22, 2/5, 2/12, 3/5, 4_19, 4/2, 4/23, 5/14 6/11, 6/25, 7/9, 7/23, 8/13, 9/3, 9/17, 10/9, 11/26, 12/3, 12/17, 1/14
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