I’ve never been fired from a job, but I kind of got the boot from one this past weekend.
Heartland Homes of Plover, which is constructing a new home for my wife, Jenny, and I in Stevens Point, gave us the opportunity to paint the interior rooms of our home over the Easter weekend, before flooring, doors, light fixtures and outlets are installed. Translation: take advantage of this now, or spend a lot of time later taping around these things.
We were sort of ready for this endeavor. We spent months looking at color samples, and we debated the merits and pitfalls of each color until we had our choices. At one point, Jenny even taped nearly 100 color samples on the wall of our apartment so we could have conversations about colors at any given moment’s notice.
Purchasing these colors got off to a rocky start, as I left the store soon after we got there. The teenager working there asked if we planned on purchasing a lot of paint, because the paint store was closing in 45 minutes. Yes, we planned on purchasing a lot of paint, and if that was going to inconvenience him, I didn’t want his store to get any of our money.
Fortunately, the next store was much better and within an hour we had all seven gallons of paint we thought we needed. The lady who helped us was super nice and definitely knowledgeable about her department. She even helped me convince Jenny to go with a color for the office my wife wasn’t really feeling. Any married man would probably agree with me that that’s quite an accomplishment.
After Jenny was done working the next day, we went to the house with Jenny’s sister, Raechel, to begin the painting task. Although I knew I wasn’t much of a painter, I was looking forward to the experience because it meant I got to spend time in my future home.
We started with the master bathroom. Using a purple color, we had painted half the room by the time Jenny’s dad, Brad, arrived to inspect our work. A plumber by trade, but truly a McGyver with his vast knowledge of pretty much everything involving construction and even nonconstruction, he was there to make sure we were painting properly.
He took one look at my work and just shook his head. I was getting paint on the ceiling and leaving paint lines everywhere.
Jenny and Raechel were also leaving some lines, but not to the extent I was leaving them. They quickly learned from their mistakes and were soon perfectionists.
I tried to learn from my mistakes, but I think I made it worse in going back over my work.
Later, Raechel worked with me some and I got to the point where I was a C- painter, rather than an F one – and “F” could stand for a word other than “failed” as an adverb for such words as “awful” and “horrible” – but with only one weekend to paint all the rooms in the entire house, they didn’t have time to watch and guide me, so I was effectively fired from the job.
They did it nicely, though. I was relegated to other duties, such as the guy who ran to the store to get more paint and supplies, the guy who picked up food, the guy who watched the kid and the guy who assembled the closet organizers for the master closet.
Later, I became the guy who got to go around and touch up spots on the ceiling, which they accidentally painted. Even that was a learning curve for me, as I got white paint on areas they had painted different colors.
I’m proud of teaming up with the lady at the store to convince Jenny of a dark gray-blue color for the office. It turns out that color is her favorite one in the house. At least I can take pride in one thing when it came to painting.
People who want to see how well I painted, excuse me, how well I didn’t paint, will have the opportunity to do so Friday through Monday, June 3-7, during the Golden Sands Home Builders Association Parade of Homes. Our modest house is one of 16 homes on the annual tour.
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Orginally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, April 29, 2011.
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