Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I did it.
I’m glad I did it in the same way one is glad to have a filling over and done with at the dentist. The pain of the drill is a dull memory once the toothache is gone.
My husband and I moved into our home nearly eight years ago. The house is one of those open concept structures where one can practically see every other space from any vantage point.
After two months of medical house arrest following knee surgery, I was bored out of my ever-loving mind from staring at the yellow-bedecked walls of our home. There was a lot of freaking YELLOW. Maybe it was the pain medication or maybe it was the boredom, but it was then that I decided to pull the paint trigger.
I should probably mention here that I hate the color yellow. The hatred may be because I have red hair and on the rare occasion I don a golden-hued outfit, I look like a model for Cruise Wear for Clowns.
It is more likely, however, that my distaste for the color of sun comes from a childhood indignity from which I have clearly not recovered. I was probably a teenager when my parents decided to have the exterior of our home painted. Admittedly, Buttercup Yellow looked quite lovely on a paint chip. Magnified a few hundred thousand times, one’s house becomes a recognition beacon for NASA.
Spending another wad of cash to correct the problem was out of the question for our middle-class family, so we were resigned to live in a house that undoubtedly became known to the neighborhood as the “banana house.” One can imagine the local nursery down the street giving directions to their customers, “Yes, sir. You go up the road, take a right, and then a quick left after you pass the banana house.”
It will be no surprise then that it took every one of the eight years my husband and I have lived in our home to find the right color for the interior. Once we settled on a color that could never garner a fruit-flavored nickname, we went by the book when hiring our painter. We got references. And pricing. And schedules. We asked all the right questions.
“Do you patch the walls, too?” “Do you prime them first?” “Who pays for the paint?”
All the questions were asked, except for the one we should have asked right from the get-go before choosing our painter:
What kind of music do you like?
Before heading up to my office at the top floor of our home, I casually asked our painter on his first day if he would like me to turn some music on for the crew. I should have known trouble was on the horizon when he enthusiastically replied, “Absolutely!”
“I like country,” he volunteered, “but not that twangy old timey stuff.”
Incredulous, I pressed, “You mean you don’t like George Jones? Conway Twitty?? Hank FREAKING Williams?! Are you insane, man??”
(I may have left the last sentence off, but I thought it. Oh, I definitely thought it.)
Nope. Painter Andy likes pop country.
“Taylor Swift sings country now,” he offered as he studied my crestfallen face, thinking somehow, I’m sure, this little nugget of information might ease the mind of his middle-aged client. It did not.
I stole a glance at my glowing buttercup walls to remind myself why we were here today and I repeated a mantra: This is my house and I am the music decider-in-chief.
“Painter Andy,” I mustered, “I forbid pop country in this house.”
Unfazed, he countered, “I also like sixties music. Up to you.” This is not a decision one should ever have to make.
I would not know until later that I gave up too quickly when I said, “Sixties music it is, then.”
As the morning wore on, I realized I should have asked a follow-up question:
Do you have a background in singing, Painter Andy?
My Facebook entry from day two illustrates my state of mind 48 hours into this ride:
The painters learned how to work our Alexa pod yesterday morning and there’s no turning back now. Two days of 1960’s music blaring through the house with painters who should not quit their day jobs to join a singing troupe. Playing now: They Call Me Mello Yellow. My painters are singing “harmony” complete with back-up vocals.
Let me just say, the song title was not the worst of it. The trio took to heart the old adage, “Dance like nobody’s watching. Sing like nobody’s listening.” This house is simply not big enough to contain their enthusiastic musical stylings and “creative” melodies.
A week later, they were finally done, and just like those of a dentist’s drill, my memories of paint-speckled middle-aged men improvising dance moves to Puff the Magic Dragon are slowly fading, though I am told the PTSD may be with me for a while.
As I sit here today, surrounded by my freshly painted grey walls, I spy a few cracks in our tile bathroom floor. If anyone knows how to put a parental control on Alexa’s music selection feature, would you let me know? We are about to embark on a tiling project and it appears Painter Andy is a man of many talents.
Christine Anne Scott 