A White Weekend

While most people spent their Easter weekends visiting with family and friends and celebrating traditions, etc., we spent our Easter weekend painting our itty-bitty condo. 

Remember when Ken and I painted our place this awful brownish/mauve-ish color way back when? 

(The color itself wasn't awful; it just looked awful in our apartment, and we knew it as soon as we had passed the point of no return on the paint-scale.) 

We made do with these pukey walls for nearly two years until finally, last weekend, Ken and I decided it was time to pick a new color. Because we are renters, and because our rental agreement states that any color we may choose to paint the walls during our tenancy has to be covered with white again before our contract is terminated, we decided it would be a good idea to save ourselves another painting job down the road by choosing a white paint. White is the it color right now, anyway (thanks to the popularity of Scandinavian-influenced interior design, no doubt) so, really, we were being practical and cool with this little decision of ours. And how hard could it possibly be to paint our small space white?

Hard. 

First, we were met with roughly two hundred different shades of white upon our first visit to the local paint store. And I'm probably being quite conservative with that number. 

Second, we probably should have gone over our brown/mauve walls with primer before tackling them with white paint. We didn't. (I know. Dumb.)

We kicked off Friday morning with all of our supplies in order and feeling very optimistic about our painting project. Excited, even. 

After we went through the mundane task of taping-up everything we didn't want to paint, we happily set about spreading white paint along the corners and edges of our little apartment. 

Thirty minutes into the painting job, we were both commenting on how cathartic painting really is and how we should do stuff like this more often. Maybe we should even take a painting class so we can paint pictures to hang on our new white walls!

Three hours into the painting job, however, we were cursing our 29-year-old selves for being so stupid as to paint the apartment in the first place, way back when.

And here's a little bit of blunt honesty: Spending approximately 16+ hours painting your living space with your spouse (unsuccessfully, I might add, due to the aforementioned lack of primer) has a way of showing you what your marriage is truly made of.   

I'm very happy to report that both of us--and our relationship--came out of our painting project intact and in good health. There were only a few fleeting moments when I had the urge to dump the bucket of remaining paint over Ken's head, and Ken did a spectacular job of not reaming me out the third time (yes, three times) I bent over to pick up a paint brush only to have my full head of hair stick to a wall of fresh paint on the way down. 

I'm also happy to report that our apartment is now white, 16+ hours of labor and two gallons of paint later.  

We went to bed late Saturday night reeking of paint fumes, sweat and tears, but finished.  On Sunday we woke up, each of us aching in every muscle imaginable (including muscles I wasn't even aware I had), and we practically waddled into Burlington to have Easter dinner with Ken's brother and his mom. And, if you look closely, you can see I still had a fair bit of white paint glued to my hair, three washings after the fact:

(...and it's still there, making my pre-existing grays look far more dignified than they should.)