Beth + Home Improvement = Disaster

Well, maybe Disaster is an exaggeration, but I do seem to have some perilous experiences doing what many would consider fairly mundane tasks. Today I was merely painting my daughter's room, a pretty common and not too difficult task, right? WRONG. I love watching the designers on HGTV paint rooms: first they clear everything out of the room, then they prep, finally they paint. Not so at my house where I am forced to paint with all of my daughter's furniture in the middle of her room creating about an 18" border around the edge of the room for me to sit, stand, or place my ladder. This is probably a good time to mention that my daughter's room has 14' ceilings so I needed a really big ladder. A really big and heavy ladder. In addition to not clearing out the room properly, I like to spice up my painting experience by prepping as I go. I don't intentionally skip the prep work, there just always seems to be a stray nail or screw hole that I miss during prep that I notice whilst 6 inches away from the wall, clinging to the ladder, and painting. In order to minimize my trips up and down the ladder I like to wear an apron with a big center pocket where I can keep my drywall spackle, putty knife, Oops! Paint Wipes, and of course my cell phone. That's another key component to remember: during this entire episode I am talking on my cell phone, using my headset of course.

So I clamber up the ladder, my center of gravity slightly off due to the heavy swinging of my big apron pocket up front. I don't really have room to set up the ladder properly so I have a nearly vertical ascent instead of a nice safe angled ascent. I have rubber-banded towels to the top of my ladder to keep the ladder's edge from damaging the wall. This works great, except for the fact that the rubber grips on the ladder's edge that are designed to grip the wall can no longer do any ...uh...gripping. Anyway, no matter, I climb the ladder with my EZ Grip paint can in one hand, cell phone ear bud in one ear, and my paintbrush in my teeth. It takes me a moment after I have climbed the ladder to realize that the ladder isn't squarely resting on both feet on the floor, one foot has caught the edge of my drop cloth and is able to pivot. This pivot, felt about 10 feet in the air, is really contributing to my feeling of being off balance. The problem is I have no where to go! When I shift my weight to one foot to go back down, the ladder pivots awkwardly away from the wall. I have only one hand free to hold on the ladder and am concerned, due to my vertical angle, that if I let go of the ladder to try to steady myself against the wall, I'll fall.

Now obviously I'm not still trapped up on the ladder (carrying a laptop in my big front apron pocket would be outlandish, even for me), so eventually I figured out to lean my body weight forward (thus pushing the ladder against the wall) and kind of slither down the ladder without shifting side to side too much.

All's well that ends well. The room is painted. Two coats, no less. I am safely on the ground again and grateful the job is done. A few drops of paint did slosh over the top of my EZ Grip paint can during my "slithering down the ladder" but it seemed a fairly small price to pay considering what almost happened. Actually, it's one of the smaller prices I have paid: once while stripping wallpaper in my bathroom I ended up wetting my pants because I waited too long to use the toilet and found myself with a boiling hot steamer in one hand, no place to put it down, and jeans too sweat-slicked to my legs to come down just using the other hand. I danced around a minute or two valiantly struggling to get out of my jeans and not give myself third degree burns but all the jumping around merely hurried the inevitable: me wetting my pants while literally standing next to a toilet.

I think I'll take up roofing next.