The Renovation Diaries Week 14-15: Running On Fumes

This is part… who knows of The Renovation Diaries, a week-by-week chronicle of Western Living‘s editor-at-large as she tackles a fixer-upper. View all Reno Diary entries here.

I’m a big enough woman to admit it: I’m hiding from my apartment.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve gone in six times to paint and it’s STILL. NOT. DONE. I feel like I have reached the limits of how much spilled Kilz primer human skin can endure, and so now I’m hunkered down in my temporary lodgings in Surrey and hoping my retired in-laws will just finish it for meeeeeeee.

This paint job has officially broken me. Normally, I am proudly a Hard Worker. No job is too belittling, as you would know if you saw me peeling linoleum up from around the toilet with my bare hands! I’ll do long hours and gruelling tasks, no complaining here. And painting specifically has been something I have historically been excited to help with.

But I guess it’s sort of like the time I went to Munich and went to town on a platter of Bavarian pretzels and then had to go lay down for the rest of the evening due to what I will loosely define as “carb poisoning”: there is a such thing as overdoing it. And five coats of paint (three primer, two eggshell) are definitely overdoing it. Put away the mustard! Cut me off!

What I’m saying is: this isn’t fun anymore. You wouldn’t think that light blue would be so tough to cover up, but it is! And I may be losing my mind (because paint fumes) but I’m pretty sure the kitchen wall still looks slightly yellow? Also how is it possible that the hall closet took half a bucket of primer? Is there some sort of Narnia portal that is sucking up my precious drops of Snowcap White?!

It’s also very overwhelming to realize that once we’re done the walls there are also doors to paint, and trim, and baseboards, and then on to the accent painting (like a very cool but also incredibly intimidating grid pattern that’s planned for the circle wall in the bedroom). So you can understand why I’m burying myself in work and letting my tireless in-laws hold the roller for a bit. Heroes! I cannot stress this enough!

But here’s the nice thing about being in Paint Mode: it’s almost one of the last things we can actually DIY, and something that actually doesn’t need to be done for us to move in. So I can keep putting this off for weeks to come. The big stuff is going to start happening in the next week, and I’m almost dizzy with excitement (or is that the paint fumes again?) over how it’s all going to cascade into place once the cabinetry gets delivered this Friday.

The flooring is in the house and ready to be laid, though I am not sure the logistics of this part of it given that every inch of the exposed concrete floor right now is covered in tools and empty cans of paint. Four absolutely giant Mutina tiles for the bathroom floor are delicately stacked in the closet after four incredibly high-stakes journeys hauling them up in the elevator. (Somehow they were at once ultra-heavy and heart-stoppingly fragile? What is up over there in Italy?)

In case you’re worried we’ve been working too hard over here, we’ve made time for our other fun new hobby, Psychological Mind Games to Convince Your Spouse to Buy the Sofa You Want. The nice thing is you can play it anytime, anywhere, and if your partner doesn’t want to play with you, you can always switch to a similar but more independent game, Worrying That Your Designer is Going to Be Mad at You If You Don’t Buy That Upholstered Bed Frame He Recommended.

As I’ve said before and I’ll say again: We’re fine! Everything’s fine!!

Follow along on Instagram and come back next week for more Renovation Diary updates!