No Big Love On THIS Compound

I asked Johnny to sum up the how-tos for me again this morning, because he was not exactly crystal-clear on the finer points of the procedure yesterday. So he did.

It goes pretty much like he said yesterday: slathe it, press the tape, cut the tape, slathe it again (but, like everything else about homeownership, you really can’t know what that means until you’ve done it). And then, before he hopped out of the car he gave me one last bit of advice:

“You’re gonna need that small dropcloth,” he said, “because you’re gonna get it everywhere.”

Well, you don’t know the half, my dear.

Oh, it stuck to the walls, all right. The walls, and the ceiling, and the floor, and the ladder, and the doorjamb, and the drop cloth. And to me. Hell, I just stepped in a lump of it underneath my desk – I don’t know how the hell I managed that one…

In the beginning, I was being careful. Using the j.c. sparingly, trying to spread it really thin, with the big round knife that I’ve seen Johnny use.

Soon enough, I was slathing it on there, glopping it on and just shaving off the excess, using the smaller, flat-topped knife because at least I could make it freaking work.

I hate this. Ooh boy, do I hate this!

You slabber it all on there and it smutches out the edges of the knife and plobbles all over your head and shoulders everything. It’s always either too thick or too thin, and even when you think you’ve finally got it sort of good enough there’s always one millimeter – no matter how hard you try, there’s always at least one – where you didn’t get it quite as thick, or as wide, as all the rest, So when you press the tape to it, it sticks at first, but then as you go along slothering globble on top of the tape, it pulls up in that one spot. It won’t stay back down no matter what you do, so you end up shbirtzing the tape up with your fingernail and suppositing more gollow underneath there with your thumb. This act, in turn, makes it wovel up in other places.

(“Suppositing”: a word that I made it up. It means use your finger to — oh, I’m sure you’re capable of figuring it out.)

In addition to all of this joy, it’s also really, really fun – if you’re ever bored or have the grandkids visiting or what-not – to stand on a ladder inside a closet with no air circulation, a closet off the only room in your house with windows that don’t open (yeah, we’ll put that on the list right after “furnace,” “new roof,” and “privacy fence”), on an 84-degree July day (okay, so that’s not so bad – but that is outside) in a house that has no air conditioning (which is by preference, but still).

Plus, I’m not sure – I mean, it’s white and everything – but think that joint compound might be made of poo.

Day 40 (hey, if that’s the case then is that an olive branch or hyssop that I see Goody extending?): Accomplished
Time: 90 minutes
Cost: Nothing (unless Johnny charges me for the almost entire tub of crap I used)
Joint Compound: Pee-yew!