Painting A House

One cool thing you may not know is that I moved back to Christchurch a couple of years ago and I hear many of you say why? why would you do this? and you make a valid point, but I wanted to buy a house, and buying a house by yourself in Auckland is the sort of concept that makes you laugh hysterically and then become Very Sad And Quiet and wonder why you didn’t save money when you were young instead of spending it all on ridiculous yet delightful things that in hindsight you probably did not need.

this giant scarf is a very very good example

here is my mum in the scarf. scarf so big mum so small. actually i do not regret buying this scarf

Anyway, the average house price in Christchurch is less than half the average house price in Auckland and so in the interests of getting plenty of house for my embarrassingly meagre house money I moved back here and I bought a house! It is a good house and I like it. It’s a three bedroom 1930’s weatherboard with high ceilings and big rooms and it’s one of those houses that you walk into and it feels like a home.

However, that is not why I bought the house. I bought the house because of a pun.

The house is on Harrison Street and the listing title was “Harrison Af-FORD-able” and I could not resist opening the listening and then the house looked ok and so I went to the open home and then I bought the house. (There would be the standard “happy person standing by Sold sign” photo here but I’ve just looked at that photo and for some reason my legs look very fat, and so you will just have to imagine that picture.)

When I bought the house it was definitely “in need of some TLC”, as real estate agents are fond of saying when the house is a wee bit fucked. It had been rented out for the last 10 years and I gather not always to particularly houseproud people.

Example: at the open home there were bits of cooked egg splattered all about the stove. So the paint was in a terrible state and also, to add charm, a different colour in every room. The hallway and lounge were a sort of Nana’s Grubby Nightrobe Purple, the kitchen and laundry were pea-green, the back bedroom was butter yellow, the front bedroom navy blue, and the master bedroom this delightful dried blood colour:

why

There were also a few cosmetic cracks in the walls, a couple of windowsills that needed replacing, and various other hints* that I was going to have to do some renovatory things. The real estate agent said “whoever buys this will need to have some imagination” and in hindsight that should have been a much bigger red flag than it was.

Obviously I had never done any renovation before. “Haha,” I thought blithely, “how hard can painting a house be? I painted the garage once!”

Hahahaha. Hahahahahaha. Hahahahahaaaaaa.

I have now, with the help of SJ, sanded and plastered and painted and that part of it is almost done!

But please. Learn from my mistakes. If you are thinking of buying something (of the house variety) that needs painting, here are some cool things to be aware of.

1. It takes fucking forever

I decided to DIY it because a) cheaper and b) how long could it take? FOREVER THAT’S HOW LONG.

And after about two months people will start saying “How is the painting going? Finished yet?” But after three months, they will no longer ask at all. Then after four months they will begin to ask again, but in rather a different tone. Almost… judgmental. Almost as if they think you should have finished the painting by now.

To which you say “IT’S GOING WELL THANK YOU” and change the subject, potentially to something you know they don’t want to talk about.

2. You will have nothing you need (and hand sanding is for chumps)

Assuming this is the first time you’ve attempted to fuck about with an expensive piece of property, hoho what a good idea, you will need to buy everything. Everything does not sound like much. Paint, paint roller, perhaps the odd drop cloth. Surely that should do it?

Ha ha! You fool. That will not do it.

You have forgotten sandpaper and brushes and mini rollers and masking tape and Bog, whatever Bog is, and plaster, and the plaster trowel, and the scrapy thing you use when you’re using the plaster trowel, and fifteen different grades of sandpaper, most of which you will never need, and a screwdriver, and another screwdriver because you bought the wrong sort, and a craft knife, and thirty old tea-towels, and new teaspoons because somebody used all your teaspoons to mix the Bog, whatever Bog is, and sealant, and wood primer for the windowsill you didn’t realise you would have to replace, and a massive thing of wood out of which to make the windowsill you didn’t realise you would need to replace, and also a stepladder and quite a lot of beer.

Also you are going to need to buy an electric sander. I did approximately 20 minutes of hand sanding and then went “oh fuck this” and went to Bunnings and bought a nice little sander called Mouse.

But then of course you need to buy the sanding pads for Mouse, and you buy the wrong ones. Twice.

not the sort of plastered I wish to be

3. 80% of ‘painting’ is not, in fact, painting

By the time SJ and I reached the part of ‘painting a house’ where you are actually, literally, painting a house I was longing for the sweet release of death. It turns out that before you get to painting there is much sanding and fixing and Bogging (still not entirely sure what Bog is) and filling and re-sanding and levelling and plastering and sanding and sweating and running out of sandpaper.

And then somebody says “oh, you haven’t got any paint on yet?” and you think FUCK OFF, I WILL SAND YOU.

This leads me directly to my next point -

4. You will worry you have bought a perfectly nice house and fucked it up

There was one afternoon where I was round painting by myself and I was sat on a dropcloth with paint in my hair and mini roller in my hand and despair in my head and I peeked out into the hallway (which is currently full of doors, because they’ve all been removed for painting, with the exception of the toilet because privacy > precision) and I thought, this will never get done! I have taken on far too much and this will never be finished and I should have just bought somewhere that did not need any of this shit done!

This part is not any fun, but just keep on chugging through because a) once you start getting the paint on it will start to look better and you will start to feel better and b) there will always be something else that needs doing because apparently home ownership is its own sort of peculiar curse, but nobody tells you about it beforehand. Don’t let the sheer scale of the shit you need to do on your house put you off your house, is what I’m saying here.

otherwise you will never get to be disproportionately proud of things like this

5. There are some essential items you will need

In my opinion, they are these:

Electric sander, as previously mentioned

Mini Roller, because mini roller gives you a much nicer finish on doors/skirting boards/windowframes than a brush ever will, and because it’s satisfying to use, and because you can roll it on your boyfriend’s butt and then pretend it wasn’t you. Some mini rollers come with a little pottle to clip the roller head into after you’re done using it, and you should buy one of these, because the roller doesn’t dry out, and it means no rinsing the roller! Rinsing the roller is a heinous job and best avoided. You can use the time you would have spent rinsing the roller to have a beer.

Good masking tape, because it makes your cutting-in fuck ups a lot less of a big deal (I can hear you now, saying smugly, “I won’t be making any cutting-in fuckups,” but you are WRONG)

Carpet protectors for when you’re doing the skirting boards. Just… just trust me on this. It’s one thing for the carpet to match the drapes, but quite another for it to match the walls.

the sweet, sweet pea-green walls.

6. It is good to have painting pals

Like riding a tandem bicycle or efficiently utilising a double-ended dildo, painting can be accomplished alone but is much easier if you have some pals. Be choosy about your pals though. Many people will say “Oh! I would love to help paint!” but mysteriously have no interest in sanding. Many other people will say “Oh! I would love to help paint!” and then gleefully splosh ceiling paint all over your bench. Choose your painting pals wisely, is all I’m saying.

If your painting pal is also your excellent boyfriend, be aware that he may wish to ‘christen’ a room of the house, and you may have to gently remind him that there is no furniture and that’s a very quick road to carpet burns for everyone, and also could we at least wait until the ceiling’s finished so nobody ends up with their arse in the paint tray.

this is what good painting pals look like

7. You will never be properly clean again

Paint and plaster are your life now. There is no you any more. There is only paint and plaster. You will get plaster dust in your hair and you will, somehow, get paint up your nose and you won’t know why either of these things have happened and for a while it will distress you, but after about the fourth time you will just go “huh, there is paint on my butt again” and into the shower you go.

Also, after several emergency trips to Bunnings for more sander pads (it’s always more sander pads) you will become shockingly blase, to the point of going to the supermarket in your painting clothes, which consist of a very old t-shirt and a pair of tiny shorts, both of which are covered in paint. And if somebody looks at you in an unusual fashion you will shrug and say “house painting” and they will quietly move out of the beer aisle.

this stops looking weird after a while

And just when you think you’re really starting to get somewhere someone will say “Are you still painting?”

AND YOU WILL SAND THEM.

*my favourite feature is the splashback in the kitchen. At the open home I thought “oh nice, the splashback has a little row of tiles.” However upon closer inspection, after settlement, I noticed that in fact the splashback does not have a little row of tiles. The splashback has a bit of wall that somebody has painted to look like a little row of tiles!