My Epiphany about Epiphanies

Yesterday, I came up with my most brilliant idea of the year. Truly, it was simply phenomenal. Our house is a bungalow built in 1933. When we purchased it, to us, that meant charm. I mean, it still has the original doors and glass doorknobs. Take that and combine it with hardwood floors, a large yard, a large kitchen,(and yes, a dishwasher) and we were charmed into buying.

Unfortunately charm technically means work. I'm not really sure how the two tie together but they do. And this is where my mind and my thought pattern was yesterday when I woke up. There are things in this house that simply need to be redone.

Now, Martha Stewart I am not. Nor am I an interior designer, and my home collection shows it. I'm pretty sure if they came out with a line of my personal home decor, it would be titled Le Hodge Podge. Given the funds, I would gladly hire a crew to come in, demolish-strip-paint-rebuild-cute-ify every square inch of this place. However, I am a stay at home mom, and our budget is stretched. Things are tight.

But see, the thing is, as I sat yesterday watching Critter eat his breakfast, I had an epiphany (I seem to have a lot of these and apparently haven't yet learned that epiphanies are usually not a good thing when they spontaneously erupt from my brainwaves). If I wait until we have an abundance of funds to start fixing up the place, I will be ready to move to the nursing home. I can either get up the nerve for a healthy dose of DIY or I can live the status quo.

I opted for the DIY route. I mean how hard can it be, really? It's not like I haven't read any assortment of DIY blogs over the past year or so. And back in the day, I could watch the heck out of Trading Spaces. (Is that even still on?)

A while back my in-laws gave us a whole slew of paint that was left over from their re-paint job on their home interior. Since I already had the paint, and I had a great portion of the supplies needed sitting around our home in various places, I began in our bathroom. I chose this room because it's the smallest room in our house. For those of you who speak fluent Chas this interprets directly to 'The room that will be easiest to redo when things explode and I've messed it up entirely'.

So sometime after breakfast, I climbed Mount Babygate and began work on our bathroom cupboards, which will be miraculously transformed from their generic dark oaky color to black by the end of the redo.

I did not take into account what DIY means with a 19 month old running wild and unchecked in my home. I was soon enlightened to find out that it means while I am busy not paying attention to him and sanding down the cupboards, he will find the need to help me out with my homemaking duties and use his footie pajamas to mop my kitchen floor for me. Water courtesy of the dog dish. He also took it upon himself to redo my decor by completely emptying his toy box and artfully arrange his toys over every square inch of floor space between his bedroom, the kitchen, and the living room. His decor line is titled Le Tod Podge.

Today I decided that I simply can not handle another dog water wash on my kitchen floor, so I waited until my sweet little Critter was down for his nap before embarking on my bathroom project. Having done all of the sanding and priming yesterday, I began applying paint on the cabinets today.

I soon discovered the oops paint I thought was black looked much grayer out of the can. It didn't completely cover my white primer- but I figured it wouldn't on the first coat- but I had to use white primer because it's what I already had on hand, and this is a budget DIY project for Pete's sake. So while my little Critter snored peacefully away in his crib, my mind became obsessed with the color gray.

-Gosh that's awful gray.

-John's going to kill me, I told him the cabinets would be black. And I started this project without even talking to him in the first place. Surprise honey, I've torn apart our bathroom, you can't shave because I've got drop cloth taped over our sink, and ta-da! How about a gray cabinet or two?

-Would he buy the line 'Gray is the new black'?

-I'm going to have to rethink my wall color. Crap, this whole thing is about using what's on hand, what on Earth am I going to tell John when I need to go buy a couple gallons of paint?

-I'm not sure I can do gray. Maybe I should just go buy a small container of real black and go over with the black at the end?

I was totally and completely fixated on gray. Just before I was finishing the last part of the last cabinet, I noticed that my gray was drying a bit darker. I breathed a sigh of relief, noted that I hadn't been that covered in paint since high school when I worked on Tech Crew backstage making sets for plays and such. While admiring the nice dark black color my cabinets were drying into, I stepped backwards off my handy dandy step stool.

Right into the bucket of paint.

Because I'm Chas and that. Is just what I do.

I will now leave you with the mental picture of me with a black foot and ankle wrapping a makeshift cover with improvised drop cloth rippings, (plastic and paint are slipperier than ice- it's a wonder I didn't break anything) once again scaling Mount Babygate, hunchback sliding my foot across from the bathroom to the living room and finally through the kitchen to the sink (the bathroom sink is out of commission remember). I'm 5 foot 3, so I have nooooooo clue how I cleared the counter and managed to get my foot in the sink without leaving a trail of gray (until it dries anyway). I will tell you it was a sight to behold.

Next time I have an epiphany, somebody needs to smack me back into reality.