DIY around the house 2

The water dripping down my body and gathering in a pool around my feet is dark blue, not clear or sparkling like you see on the adverts for holidays abroad, but a dark, navy, blue with a tinge of grey in it and no, I am not on some Caribbean island swimming with dolphins or other such nonsense.  I’m at home in my bathroom under the lockdown. I have been standing under this shower for 20 minutes now, my skin is gone all wrinkly from being in the water too long, its dark blue in most places and red raw in other places from the vigorous scrubbing with a large nail brush. I look like a children’s party clown who was very, very drunk when he applied his makeup or a bank robber who opened the bag of money when the dye used as a security measure exploded all over him. That’s not the worst part, my daughter and herself are trying to clean up our once normal, tidy kitchen. God help me, there is no escape this time.

Paint the kitchen, she said. It will be grand, she said.  Sure, what can go wrong, you have no drills, or machinery to deal with just a paint brush and roller. I want my kitchen painted a nice shade of blue and this time I am warning you no messing about, just get it done and finished today. It’s finished all right, as am I. That fecking dog, I blame him it was all his fault. 

What started as a normal bank holiday weekend has turned into one, I would like to forget. After herself announced she wanted the kitchen painted I like any reasonable man came up with all the excuses as to why it could not be done at this time. The hardware shops are closed so I can’t get the paint.  No problem, she replied. I had some blue left over from the sitting room after you made a mess of the wall and I had some white left over from the ceiling as well, I have mixed them both and added some old grey paint I found under the stairs so we have plenty of paint.  With that she produced a 10-litre tub of paint. I have no brush or rollers, again she produced a set of worn but newly cleaned set of brushes and roller. Ah yea but I need masking tape to protect the kitchen cupboards and doors and floor coverings, she handed me a bunch of old newspapers and two roles of masking tape. There you have it, no excuses now, get painting, I cook and clean all week now its your turn to do something around this house apart from trying to wreck it so I’m going to catch up on my soaps and I expect it finished by this evening.

I had no choice, I moved the table & chairs, fridge, dryer, washing machine all out into the back yard. Got my ladder and decided to check the paint before I committed myself to this big job, hoping that it might not be mixed well or that she had used two types of paint, anything to stop proceedings.  I lifted up the tub of paint and placed it on top of one stool in the middle of the kitchen and opened it up. To my disappointment it was fine and a nice colour too.  Now at this stage I must introduce you to our pet family, we have Meg who is a large cross bred dog between a Labrador and Great Dane, who is getting old in years and she wanders in and out of the house at a nice steady pace, easy to see and not trip over, than we have our second dog, Tico a small, Pomeranian who likes to run in and out of rooms followed by our newest arrival Bobby even smaller than the Pomeranian who is a wildfire in small spaces, a little hyper loves running jumping and just flying all over the place expending boundless energy at the drop of a hat. Meg plonked herself down in the middle of the kitchen floor after deciding she had walked far enough, Tico plonked down beside her and Bobby just came bounding in from the other room like a Tasmanian devil.  I went to step over Meg avoiding Tico and as I put my foot down Bobby arrived underneath my foot in a blur.

Before I knew what was happening, I stood down on his tail, he reacted by whelping and at the same time snapping at my ankle, Meg and Tico jumped up barking and my tranquil world ended there and then. The shock of getting bitten on the ankle amid the cacophony of barking dogs sent me flying backwards, again I will use one of my favourite phrases, it all happened in slow motion.

I was falling backwards one leg under me and the other stretched out in front like the John Cleese character in Fawlty Towers, Basil, doing the goose step in the German episode. I too am tall and have long legs, so by the time my backside hit the ground my leg was swinging in a long arch upwards. This would be all well and good if I had not opened the 10-litre tub of paint and placed it on a high stool in the middle of the kitchen.  The inevitable happened, like the great Pele doing an overhead kick in front of goal, my foot connected with the tub of paint and sent it spiralling upwards, my life didn’t flash before me, but I saw impending doom heading my way.

The upwards motion of the tub was fine but then gravity took over and the tub was beginning to start its spin on the highest point of the trajectory, the paint started to come out of the tub in a beautiful spray motion, glistening as its form grew, spreading in an ever widening circle before it too reached its height and it simply spread everywhere before returning to earth to land in the middle of our tiled floor where it splashed like a mini tsunami sending waves of dark blue paint outwards and upwards, covering everything in its path, the dogs, myself, the floor and ending up landing on our nice light blue kitchen cabinet doors, before slow motion ended and everything returned to normal speed.

I tried to look around, but I couldn’t see as I was covered in paint, I wiped it from my eyes and looked at the carnage around me. There was paint dripping down all the cabinet doors, there was paint on the ceiling, there was an ever widening pool of paint spreading out from the upturned tub on the floor, the dogs were running all over the place, leaving blue paw prints across the parts of the floor not covered in paint and brushing against the walls and doors smearing blue paint on parts of the kitchen that were not in the blast zone. I tried to get up. I needed to get a cloth or towel even kitchen wipes to stop the ever-increasing pool of paint spreading further but slipped knocking the tub even further across the kitchen floor where it rolled out the kitchen door into our newly covered timber effect flooring in the sitting room. 

That was one of the worst moments of my life, and I have had quite a few to be honest.  It was like an after shock from an earthquake, it was herself coming to see what had happened.  She stood in the kitchen doorway holding the empty tub in her hand with paint dripping down the sides of it. If you think 3 dogs barking can make some noise it was nothing to the screams and shouts, she let out, like a wounded lioness roaring at a Carol Baskin.

My fecking kitchen………what have you done………. you f**king plonker……… my beautiful kitchen, (again because I am posting this on a public forum, I cannot use the language she used) You bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep mother bleeper………. this is the last bleeping straw……... you useless bleeping dimwit. The intense noise and barrage of insults hit me even harder than the paint and I could offer no excuse or explanation that was going to soften the blow of what had just happened or what she was looking at. Luckily my daughter heard the commotion and had arrived in the kitchen and managed to get between mother and me otherwise I would have felt the empty tub across my skull several times no doubt such was the anger being expressed.

Needles to say the women between them stopped the flow of the paint and sent me to the shower to clean up with words of “Don’t get any more paint on anything, you fecking idiot”.  My daughter rescued the day and I believe saved my life. After they spent several long hours cleaning up the paint that was on the walls, floor, ceiling, cupboard doors etc herself washed the 3 dogs and my daughter painted the kitchen.  I am once again in the garden shed. I am on a mini lockdown in the middle of the lockdown. I think I am going to need some home comforts in this shed. I might start on that once the dust settles or the paint dries. 

Once again, let this be a lesson to all out there, leave the DIY, painting, jobs around the house type of things etc to professionals, just leave me out of it, please.