What Possesses Me?

Painting the entire upstairs white seemed like a cool thing to do. It would be very easy to sell, as most realtors tell you to paint the place in bland muted colors like “eggshell” and “white” before you try to sell. Its like a blank canvas that the new owners can more easily picture painting the rooms something other than stark, institutional white.

Ok, I’m painting the entire upstairs white. Downstairs is paneled, nothing for me to do down there except replace the carpets when the time comes to sell. White is very white, and frankly its almost impossible to tell where the paint starts and stops and the primer starts and stops. You have to walk back and look and make sure you actually covered every square inch. Frankly that whole painting in a “W” is a pain in the ass, and shoulders and arms, so I prefer the up and down method, making sure to keep within a certain area so I’m sure I got it all.

Then it rained. Rain is a good thing as we’re also trying to get some grass to grow in the backyard, but the whole reason we have issues growing grass in the backyard to begin with consists of 12 fluffy legs connected to 3 fluffy bodies, connected to 3 devious husky heads who love to dig. They will dig during drought, they will dig during floods, it doesn’t matter to them, they love to dig and usually dig for something specific, like grubs or moles. Tasty things that live under the earth.

The walls have been an “earth tone” for quite some time, and for a reason (that I apparently forgot) and that reason was: dogs.

I let the dogs in from outside, being careful to wipe them down with a towel to limit the spray of muddy water on the walls, and wiped their feet to limit the amount of foot prints going up the walls, but no matter how careful, no matter how diligent I am with the towel, they seem to emit their own geysers of muddy water once they’ve hit the freshly painted walls. Smear of dog on one wall, splatter of dog on another, and a pawprint. Why? I don’t know, but a single solitary dog print on the wall, just because they could probably. Hey, look at what I did!

Even with only one coat of paint I was happy to see that a moistened paper towel was able to erase the various mud splatters and smears, but I have a feeling that keeping the walls white will be a full time job until we move. When we start showing the house, I’m pretty sure we’ll need to enclose the dogs in swiffers and mop material to keep them from marring the “ambiance”