Painters are Underpaid

Those who know me know that my husband and I are pretty handy. Lynne over at And Babies Make Six asked me this morning who installed our dishwasher, then said, "Oh, that's right, DH did". I had a call today from my across-the-hall teacher asking if our AC had ever been serviced (living in Georgia in the summer, AC is NOT optional...) I told her kind of and asked her what she needed. She said her upstairs unit had the motor running but the fan not moving. I immediately diagnosed it at either the compressor motor or this or that...she asked me how I knew and I told her I was married to a heating and air guy. Then gave her the number of a reliable AC company to call . Working 70-80 hours per week doesn't leave DH much time for service calls (above and beyond me, his mother, and our dear, sweet neighbors). So we are pretty handy and very seldom have to call a service tech to our house. The one I'm married to is expensive enough; I can only imagine having to hire a real technician. But, on the upside, Dave Ramsey would be proud when we do Financial Peace University because we don't have to budget for a serviceman in the event that something breaks at my house.

But I have decided that painters are underpaid. I don't know what the going rate for a painter is; I've never hired one. Painting is therapeutic for me; I have almost repainted every room in our house since we moved in 6 years ago. Today The Dude and I started painting his room...affectionately called The Pit, previously known as the playroom, storage room, dog pen, etc., etc. I learned long, long ago not to let anything I find out about our house surprise me. The couple we bought it from built it themselves...and you can tell. You can also tell which rooms they started in and which rooms were the last to be completed by the construction on said rooms; I can walk through and see exactly what a certain home improvement store had on sale when my house was being built. Case in point, one day I decided to strip the wallpaper in my small masterbath. I calculated it should take me a half day max. A week later I finished. When I started stripping wallpaper, I found bare sheetrock; so I had to strip and strip and strip (wallpaper, that is...) and then prime, and then paint. DH just looked at me and shook his head. Today in The Pit, I heard a noise, then The Dude saying, "Oh, man..." I visioned paint running down the wall, all over the floor, all down his front...and he walked toward me holding what looked like a big wad of masking tape. I knew that couldn't be the case because we are also replacing the baseboards and carpet in The Pit, so I have covered NOTHING with tape. He said it was paint. I just looked at him questioningly. He told me it came off the wall. My response, "But it's dry paint, how could it come off the wall?" He explained that he saw a "bubble" in the paint, so he popped it so he could paint over it. When he popped it, the paint started peeling, and peeling, and peeling. Before we were done, we had almost one whole wall stripped of paint, right down to the... you guessed it - sheetrock. I didn't build my house for a reason...I don't do sheetrock. I don't tape it or sand it or prime it or whatever else you do to it before you paint it. I like my walls decoratively painted, not sheetrock showing. Luckily, I had some primer left over from aforementioned bathroom fiasco, so while The Dude continued painting The Pit, I stopped and primed the sheetrock and am now waiting for it to dry.

If I had any sense in my head at all, I would Google "painters" in my area, call a few references, pick out a lovely color, write out a check, and sit and eat bon bons while The Pit was being converted into a lovely bedroom suitable for The Dude. But Little Miss Do It Yourself and Save Some Money is about 1/3 of the way finished with the first coat of paint. You guessed it, it will take another coat on most of the surfaces to completely cover it.

I'm exhausted, so you'll have to tune in later to hear more home improvement stories from yours truly.