Day 38: I Think We're A-Gonna Hafta Paint 'Er

Number one and first of all: I was right. And we all know that is the most important thing.

Darker don’t do diddly.

I bought the darkest Minwax stain I could find in the wee-sized pot. “Dark Walnut.” They didn’t have a sample of it, and you know you can never trust those pictures on the can, but what the hell. I figured I was giving this one final shot – one final half-assed shot, I should say – and then it would be latex time.

(For a moment, actually, I did find myself contemplating Minwax water-based latex wood stain instead of wood sealer, but when it dawned on me there was probably a reason Johnny never uses it I dropped it like a hot potato. Not so much because of whatever the door might turn out looking like – because seriously, how much worse could it get? – but because I wouldn’t know how to answer the inevitable “Why did you buy that?” with anything other than “Um, because?”)

Something must have come over me, because when I got home I actually tested it on the spine of the door before slathering all over, and I was taken aback by just how dark it was. But when I ragged it off it was nowhere near as shocking, so I figured (say it with me) what the hell.

Ooh, I just realized I never did finish slathering the spine. Oh well, it’s going to be painted anyway. I think.

Number two is that I was right again: taking the door off the hinges to do this really was a good idea. You can’t get the brush all the way to the bottom and have a dropcloth on the floor at the same time. And you can’t get the edges without freaking out about getting Dark Walnut on the Puritan Pine doorjamb. Well, maybe Johnny could, but not me.

Oh, also, don’t do this:

Fortunately drips of stain wipe up off finished wood floors real easy – right up until they’re almost all the way dried up!

Oh, and apparently all my loud brushing roused this cranky-ass spider, because I was about two minutes in when all of a sudden he went trouncing and swearing down the big front panel. (“Stupid woman. Always trying to get shit done. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”)

I should have squished him right then and there, but I was wise enough (for once) to not make any sudden movements with a pot of stain hanging from my arm. Also, for some reason (what is happening to me?), my first thought was to get the camera. For you lot. Because that’s the kind of gal I am.

Except by the time I got the camera and turned it on and put the flash on and waited for the little green flash-light to light up, he was almost off the door. So I took his picture quick:

Okay it turns out I didn’t need the flash. And by the time I shut it off and did it wrong and took another picture just like this one and then finally really-really shut the flash off, he was really-really gone.

Except he wasn’t. Because when I opened up the door to get at all the edges, he said “Why thank you very much,” and marched right in.

Number three, I think, is that the Dark Walnut looked lovely when I first lashed it on:

But when I ragged it off, the horror…

Unless number three is really that I was right again somehow I haven't figured out yet. Which I figure that I must be. Because I usually am.

(Goody's still all a-swoon over Esquire's John Edwards story I posted about yesterday, so I can get away with things like that.)

Day 38: Accomplished
Time: I really have to start paying attention to these things. Let’s say 30 minutes, including Lowe’s and clean up. Oh no wait. Clean up. Let’s say 45.
Cost: $3.66 for the stain
What To Do With An Obstreperously Piebald Portico: Paint 'er.

HA!

Driving home to see the family for Easter the other day, we heard a story on the radio about a woman in Texas who’s getting hassled by the Homeowner’s Association because she tore out her grass lawn and replaced it with naturally-occurring stone and sunflowers. The city (San Antonio, I think it was) has a program set up to encourage things like this – it’s a water conservation thing – and they actually gave her $300 towards the cost of the landscaping. But her neighbors hate it, and they’re taking her to court.

Taking her to court, can you imagine!? For landscaping her yard in the manner she saw fit. The ecologically-sound and politically-correct manner, no less!

Unfortunately, she’s screwed. Because apparently when she bought the house she signed a paper – she wouldn’t have been allowed to buy the house without signing the paper – that said she promised to keep the grass green and cut it every Tuesday and only hang pink curtains in the windows and stand on her tippytoes when she answered the door and whatever else the Homeowners Association decided was befitting their particular cachet.

What would possess a person to go and sign a thing like that?

Oh my god, if there were a Homeowner’s Association in this neighborhood they would have us tarred and feathered. We made a conscious decision when we moved in that we were going to deal with the parts we had to look at first – in other words, the inside – and when (if ever) we get that under control, then we’ll think about the parts that other people see. I mow the lawn, but that’s really about it.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Johnny plants a garden every year but then he doesn’t weed it and it gets all overgrown. I don’t weed it either because it’s not my fucking garden. He also plants things along the whole length of the fence so I can’t mow along it, but then he doesn’t weed them either. And I’m not gonna do it because they’re not —well, you know.

Speaking of the fence… It is not only chain-link, but rusted and disgusting, and it leans over in a couple places where people came around the turn too fast and wound up in the yard. That happened before we were here; it’s been like that since we moved in. A neighbor once offered to pull it up for us for nothing, if we gave him $2600 to take down the only healthy tree in the entire yard, but I said no, thanks, and I haven’t seen him since. We can’t afford a new fence yet, anyway.

Oh, and speaking of trees: There are six of them in the yard. Four silver maples: that big healthy one out back and three along the fence whose roots have bubbled up and cracked the sidewalk, and which are so big and old they threaten to throw branches down on passing cars every time the wind blows. Then two in the middle of the yard that I don’t know what they are because they haven’t any leaves. They’re sick with some kind of festering rot that kills the branches from the bottom up. One of them’s lost all its branches – it’s just a naked trunk blowing precariously in the breeze – and the other oozes brown goo on the picnic table from the branches it has left. The goo hardens up like rubber cement, and the squirrels eat it.

Oh, and speaking of squirrels: Johnny feeds them. Throws whatever’s gone bad in the kitchen out into the yard. Mushy apples, sprouted potatoes, hamburger buns that have been in the freezer since last Fourth-of-July. The squirrels come and eat it all but other things do, too. Starlings, skunks, raccoons. Just this afternoon Johnny saw a big black cat eating the hamburg buns.

Oh, yeah, speaking of cats? I feed the strays. It started with this runty one who only had half a tail and one perpetually swollen ear. I felt bad for her so I started putting a bowl under the porch. Well, of course, you never feed just one stray cat, now do you? The last time I checked there were six – plus a few who actually have owners but still like to come down for a little evening nosh.

Speaking of the porch, it kind of sags. (“Kind of” my ass, the thing’s a goddamn U). We actually were going to take care of that when we first moved in because a friend offered to lend us a set of jacks and all it takes is a week and a couple of cement blocks, but then he decided his mum’s house was uneven, and jacking up a whole house takes much longer than just jacking up a porch, and then his brother thought it looked like a good idea, and, well, blood is thicker than water after all. If our turn doesn’t come round soon we’re going to have to go ahead and rent one, because we have to get it done before we paint, and – oh, yeah, speaking of paint…

We’re not just talking a little mildew or an unfortunate color choice – actually, the color’s not that bad. No, we’re talking peeling you can see from the street at 40 miles an hour. Some windows have different color trim than all the rest. The whole back part that was rotten when we bought it got all new cedar shakes and they never got so much as primed.

Let’s see, did I forget anything? Well, there’s the pile of dirt that Johnny had delivered for the garden that turned out to be more dirt than he needed and what are you supposed to do with extra dirt? There’s the trashcan with the hostas in it over by the fence, which Johnny dug up somewhere and I which I wouldn’t let him plant because I hate hostas, so they’ve sat in trashcan-stalemate in the yard for going on three years. There’s the composter that all the veggie scraps go into but never get turned or treated or used. The fenced-in section in the corner where the leaves go every fall so that they, too, can never actually get composted. Oh, and then there’s the back porch, where Johnny puts paint buckets that he doesn’t feel like washing out, and where they sit until they’re full of rusty rainwater that probably really oughtn’t to be washed into the watershed.

In other words, our house would give any Homeowner’s Association fits of St. Vitus’ Dance. It’s a blight. It’s an eyesore. It’s a stain. And I don’t care what the neighbors think about it. I’ll get out there when I’m good and ready. And when I am, if I decide I want to fill the yard with rocks and plant sunflowers then, dammit, that’s what I’ll do.

Actually, I did plant sunflowers last year, all along the chain-link fence. They didn’t come up, not a single one.