vituperation

The spud’s room, now with dry paint.
I’m pretty pleased with this look.

“To hell with this. I’ll do it myself.”

I find myself saying this a lot recently, it seem. First, a couple of months ago with the floor guy after I broke the toilet and discovered the damaged flooring behind it. More recently, I had a crown molding guy tell me he’d call me back with an estimate to do our whole Smallville house since I was having so many problems. Like the floor guy, he never followed through, and like with the floor guy I ended up continuing the work on my own.

Probably I should actually thank both of them, because I not only saved a lot of money, I learned a lot about doing things around the house. Like a normal husband does.

This time, though…

It started on Tuesday. I lugged my big fancy Werner “I-have-28-settings” ladder to the landing of the stairwell, extended it, and positioned it against the ceiling. The walls out there were the worst in the house for gaps and knotholes. My presumption is that the original builder used some scraps in the stairwell, since in those days people kept them closed from sight with doors and curtains. Why bother with the nicer wood when company’s not going to see it, right?

And now, almost 75 years later, I have to fix it.

There’s no secret about my issues with heights. I have crappy balance, and any time I get near a place where it’s possible for me to fall I get ooked out. Almost vertigo, but I don’t reel or fall, I just feel like I’m about to. If I’m secured, like in a plane or building, heights don’t bother me. Put me on an open platform, though, and it’s a different story.

But, stairs aren’t so high, right?

Wrong.

I was on the third rung when the ladder flexed. It has three joints, you see, so it can do all these fancy things, like put it on stairs. It wasn’t a big flex, just a little give, but it woke up the voice.

OH JESUS CHRIST THE LADDER’S GOING TO SNAP IN TWO AND YOU’RE GOING TO CRASH DOWN THE STAIRS AND ROBYN’LL FIND YOU IN A BROKEN HEAP AT THE BOTTOM.

My inner voice. My Prissy.

The ladder has a 300 pound limit, I tell myself. It isn’t going to break.

Step. Flex. A wail of anguish from inside my head.

And so it went all of Tuesday night while I puttied the walls of the stairwell. I was able to get it done, though there are a few un-puttied knotholes up by the ceiling because I couldn’t bring myself to climb up that high. If I couldn’t get up high enough to putty all the knotholes, how in the hell was I going to:

1. hang crown molding all the way around the stairwell
2. paint the ceiling
3. replace the hideous light fixture–which dangled out over a vast nothingness–with our spiffy new one?

Goddamn that flexing expensive-assed ladder, and goddamn my scared-of-heights pussified self.

No way this thing was going to stay.

I fretted about it all morning Wednesday, and finally broke down and called someone to come give me a quote to do the work for me. I was just too shaky on the ladder, despite knowing in my head that it would hold me. Inner Prissy isn’t the most reasonable person in the world.

The paint-ceiling-crown molding guy was supposed to be there around 5:00. At 5:15, I started to wonder. At 5:30, I knew: it had happened again.

“To hell with this,” I said to Robyn. “I’ll just do it myself.”

I said that until I climbed up the ladder with the sander, to smooth out all the places I’d puttied. Then the voice came back, reminding me why I’d called someone in the first place. I got things sanded, but I ached from staying so tense while up there.

Painting, fortunately, was a breeze, because I have an extender that lets me run a roller all the way up to the ceiling. I spent the rest of Wednesday getting the upstairs hall and stairwell painted. I also used the roller extender to paint the ceiling. Despite my tiredness from all the work, sleep didn’t come easily that night because my shoulders hurt like hell from that extender. I had to take some Tylenol before I could rest comfortably.

Thursday morning I started calling people again, to find someone to do what I wouldn’t. What I couldn’t. I found two, one to come by on Friday morning and one to come by on Saturday.

I’d just finished the second coat of paint on the stairwell — that ugly yellow kept trying to peek through my beautiful new color since I hadn’t primed it — when I saw the car pull into the driveway. I went out front to greet him, and we worked our way slowly back to the stairs while I babbled about what I needed done.

I could tell right away he wasn’t really interested. It’s hard to blame him, though. What painter wants to do a job that’s just hanging a little crown molding, then doing touchup painting and caulking on it? I thought maybe I’d shot myself in the foot by painting the walls myself.

As it ended up, we went on a tour of the whole house. He kept going from room to room, and telling me how much he liked houses like the Smallville one. As much as I love the house, he had no problem getting me to come along and chatter incessantly about it.

Finally, we were back at the stairwell.

“I work with my wife,” he said. “We charge $250 a day, plus travel and expenses. Problem with this job is it’s a two-day job, even though it’s only a couple of hours each day. I can’t schedule another job, because most of my work is up by Ardmore and the drive would take too long. It’d end up costing you about $600.”

I nodded glumly and thanked him. No way in hell did I want to pay that much for that little. I understood his logic, though.

“Why don’t you let me show you how to set up your ladder so it’s stable, and you can save yourself $600?” he asked.

I didn’t think there was much for me to learn, and I was wrong. Turns out you can put a much shallower slope on the ladder than I thought.

“I figured it might break at the joint if I leaned it that far,” I said when he demonstrated just how far from the wall the bottom should be.

He laughed.

“This ladder is designed for you to lay it between two other ladders and put a walkboard over the rungs. It’ll hold us both. You won’t break it. Try climbing up it now.”

I scampered up the ladder all the way to the ceiling. There was still a little flex, but the ladder wasn’t nearly as scary as it had been. It was amazing.

He spent about ten minutes showing me good ladder placement, and left. Not only did he save me $600, he earned himself some business when the time to paint the outside of the house comes.

I called Robyn into the stairwell.

“I think I can do it myself,” I said.

I spent the rest of the day putting coves on the baseboards, painting around the trim, and helping out in the yard from time to time. Friday night, I called painter number two and told him I wouldn’t need him to come on Saturday.

First thing Saturday Robyn and I went into the stairwell to see how the final coat of paint looked. It looked good. This color is probably my favorite so far, because it really brings out the age of the house.

“Ready to help hang a chandelier?” I asked.

In the interests of full disclosure, I photoshopped the picture above slightly.
There was a little too much flash glare on one of my shoes, so I toned back the saturation in that area.
Other than that, this photo is unretouched.

Those smudges around the receptacle in the picture above are blood.

Also, this picture was taken about two minutes before I learned a valuable lesson about changing out lights. Namely, you should flip the circuit breaker first, instead of relying on the fact that the switch is off, because sometimes they run hot wires right into a receptacle.

And of all the places to be when you grab one of those hot wires, on a ladder over a stairwell is not the best.

Incidentally, in my original idea for this entry, I was going to leave a cliffhanger ending at the point where I grabbed the wire. But you know, it’s kind of embarrassing to have grabbed it in the first place, especially since I knew better than to be working in a receptacle with the power still on.

So you’re welcome for that. I lived. I learned.

But trials, goofs, and tribulations aside, I replaced that light and hung all the crown molding yesterday. Assuming nothing major comes up today, we should finish it all today. And that kicks ass.