BLAZE

Paintin' the bathroom red

Ah, adventures in home contracting. We're painting the main-floor powder room a lovely shade of cranberry. In such a small room, everything now seems faintly pink, so we no longer have concerns about the trim, or the linoleum, or the hand towels, or even the door, matching. There's just a vaguely ominous red glow radiating from the hallway...

Things the retail industry doesn't tell you about do-it-yourself renovations (and that I, as the daughter of a handyman, should have known):

• That painting even the smallest room in the house will require sixty dollars' worth of paint.
• That no matter what projects you have completed in the past, you do not have the correct tools to complete this job without at least two trips to the hardware store.
• That dark colours are strangely incoherent when concentrated and in no way resemble the two-by-three-inch chip you fell in love with at the paint counter.
• That eggshell is not flat.
• That the phrase "it dries darker" is the industry's code phrase for "you've been had".

Good thing we like electric-neon-raspberry. Maybe we should try a coat of black on the red before we apply the next gallon?

Next project: walls in the basement. Perhaps we'll wait for the winter holidays before buying the drywall... What's that about hiring people to do this stuff?

PS: If we can, we'll post a picture of the finished project ... if it is ever finished.