Monday, August 10, 2015

How to Paint Tile

forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit-Virgil

The true tests of marriage are setting up a tent together and painting a room together-Darryl Smith

It had been a great week.

I was home all day long, and we'd really done a great job of cleaning the house from top to bottom. Sure, there were a couple odds and ends that we hadn't managed to take care of--J had never gotten around to pulling out the bin of Owen's 9 to 12 months clothing, and I hadn't ever swept and mopped the floor in Owen's room--but on the whole, we were feeling pretty good about how the week went. We switched the library and the family room, we scrubbed the whole downstairs, we kept up with the dishes and the laundry, we ate healthy, we took long runs as a family, and we kept faithful to our goals for August--no meals out and no unnecessary shopping expenses. In short, we were feeling happy, healthy, and clean.

Saturday was going to be the day that I repainted the tile in the tub.

We knew from the day we moved in that the bathroom was going to need some work. I think, the next time we buy a house, we're going to make sure that the previous owner's take care of all the "little things" before we move in. The threshold to the bathroom is still in sad shape, and although I'd refinished and painted the bathtub a few weeks earlier, I wasn't sure how the tile would go. I went to Lowe's to ask for help picking out the right type of paint, and they sent me to Sherwin-Williams. At Sherwin-Williams I was handed a spray-on acrylic. "Are you sure?" I asked. "I used a brush in a kit to do the tub, and that worked really well." "It will be fine. Just make sure the surface is thoroughly prepped and cleaned, and give it three days to cure."

The three days to cure would be the hard part. We'd timed the tub refinishing with our departure for Csehy a few weeks earlier. I shut down the bathroom on the Saturday afternoon before, worked all day getting the tub cleaned and painted, and then no one was allowed to use the shower or bath until we returned from camp. The only sensible day to do the tile was Saturday, the day before we all left for Pennsylvania. Everyone took their last shower/bath that morning, and then as soon as J returned home from Melissa's bridal fitting, I went to work masking the tile upstairs. "I'll work as quickly as I can." I told her. "You know that I have to be at church early today, and that I have a wedding to play afterwards, right? Do you know what you'll do with the boys if they wake up?" "I think they'll get to watch some TV. We'll figure something out."

Let it be stated publicly that I did all my research for this project. I watched Youtube tutorials, carefully reread instructions multiple times, and looked up information on brush and spray techniques. The cleaning and preparation part all went according to plan, although admittedly taking longer than I'd hoped. "That's alright," I told myself "Once I start using the spray-paint I'll be at the easy part." I was a sweaty mess (so much for that last shower) sitting in a plastic-sheeted bathtub filled with old yellow paint flecks, bits of steel wool, and dirty sponges. But the tub was ready to go.

The result of the spray-paint was this: It smelled so vile that it woke both boys and J up from their naps, and it looked terrible. The paint sagged and dripped, the film hardly covered any of the discoloration, and I looked horror-struck at a painty mess that was clearly worse than the mess I had just started with.

J came upstairs and asked what that awful smell was. With my head spinning and my heart sinking, I told her that I was going to need to go to Lowe's again and figure out how to take care of the spray mess before it dried and cured on the tub. She reminded me that she needed to leave for church in a half an hour. We heard both boys making noise in their rooms. Still feeling woozy from the paint fumes, I asked her to set James up with a movie in our room and to put Owen in the pack and play. I would figure out what to do with them after I managed to get a coat of paint on.

While I drove to Lowe's and tried to clear my head with some fresh air, J changed both boys and brought them into our bedroom. We pride ourselves on limiting their screen diet, but sometimes this works against us. For example, in a bona fide emergency situation, when you need to leave for work in twenty minutes and both boys are insisting on being held and have only one very specific movie they want to watch (VeggieTales: The Toy that Saved Christmas) it isn't very easy to remember how to set up the unhooked and unplugged DVD player to the TV in your bedroom.

There were tears, and by the time J finally managed to get the DVD player turned on and properly displaying on the TV screen, Owen was wailing from the pack and play, I was back in the bathtub sanding and re-painting, and she was already fifteen minutes past when she wanted to leave for work. Stepping back in triumph from the working TV, she grabbed the VeggieTales DVD case and opened it up. Inside, of course, was the DVD to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

"I've gotta go," she yelled "and I think Owen just pooped in his diaper."

"Okay, I can break in a second." I yelled back. "Just go, and I'll look after them."

James: "Hey, George wants to watch VeggieTales. Where are the VeggieTales? George wants to watch the Toy the Saved Christmas!"
Owen: WAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I finished painting over the last potential disaster spot, and set down the brush long enough to go and attempt to sort out the boys, only stopping for a moment to grumble about how they should both be sleeping. I stepped out of the tub, and immediately left a big white painty footprint on the floor. I took off my shoes and made a note to also clean THAT up before it dried. Apparently I'd spilled some paint on the dropcloth.

Owen was in a sad state. He'd managed to untuck the sheet from the bottom of the pack and play and wrap it around both his hand and his head, which was pinned down by his flailing hand with his butt stuck up in the air. The poopy diaper wasn't even remotely contained. In fact, it was visibly dripping down his back and up to his shoulders as he struggled and flailed in the crib. Meanwhile, James kept blearily asking about watching a movie.

I picked up Owen and brought him into his room, trying not to touch him or let him drop onto the floor. As soon as I set him down he began oozing out onto the changing pad, and I peeled his onesie off and tossed it, with the changing pad, onto the floor, making a mental note to come back with a plastic bag before anybody stepped in them. The child was absolutely covered in...well, you know. "Owen," I said "you've just gotta go right into the tub."

I think I actually took a step towards the door before I remembered what was going on in the bathroom. Owen looked at me helplessly as I held him up by his armpits and tried to figure out where to set him down. I glanced back at the changing table, still covered in his explosion, and then he grinned at me and shook his head "no." (This is his newest trick.) He's very proud of it. I set him down naked on the floor just long enough to grab a handful of wipes. And in the second that I wasn't holding him, he immediately rolled onto his back, his stomach, and began to crawl away.

"AAHHH!! Why didn't I clean your floor!" Now he was not only covered in poop, but there was a poop streak on the floor and little bits of dirt and lint and dust bunnies were stuck all over his unbatheable body. I wet-wiped his wriggling body, wet-wiped the floor, and set a squirming naked boy (much happier now that he was out of that diaper) into his crib. Knowing he wasn't remotely sanitized but would need to be put back into some clothes, I struggled in vain to get some 6 to 9 month clothing over his enormous head and then put him back in the pack and play with the too-small snaps left unsnapped. James had continued asking for TV for that entire time, and was finally quiet when I unplugged the DVD player, plugged the Wii back in, and put on a George.

"Okay, George will watch himself."

J, meanwhile, had been routed by a traffic detour onto 490 E instead of 490 W and then spat out into Henrietta when she took the wrong exit onto 390 once she got turned around. She ended up being 45 minutes late to her rehearsal for church.

I finished up the first coat of paint (which looked much better than the spray job) just as James finished his George, and I texted J "I'm pulling the emergency parachute on a Wegmans pizza." With another coat to do in three (but no more than four) hours and being already exhausted, I gave up on the resolution about eating out to make sure I could get some sort of dinner on the table. I loaded the boys into the car and picked up some frozen pepperoni pizzas and a case of beer. They shared a steering wheel cart and Owen shouted in excitement most of the time we were in the store.

As soon as we got packed, Owen had another blowout up to his shoulders. I changed him again into another too-small onesie, then laid down on the floor with all the downstairs windows open while both boys crawled on me and James sang Sunday school songs. I was covered in paint chips, tub grime, and sweat. At some point the pizza was done, and I cut James' into tiny pieces. I gave Owen a bowl full of peas and corn with torn up ham and cheese, and he mostly spread them around his tray. J came into the house shortly after 6:30, and I unlatched Owen's tray so I could hand him to her. James got up and ran circles around the table, and promptly knocked down Owen's tray, spilling peas, corn, ham and cheese bits all over the freshly mopped and swept floor.

It was good, when I went back upstairs to work on the second coat, that I'd brought back some beer.

J had some too.

2 comments:

  1. Owen was in a really tough spot there; not to mention all the additional cleaning you had to do. You weren't dealing with stuff that is easy to wipe off, and there's also the issue of smell. I'm sure you've got the right chemicals to get that bit of business done with.

    German Zollinger @ Total Clean Equipment

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