Once upon a time, I worked in a grade school as the maintenance man/custodian. The kids of this school were in grades one through six, which meant I was surrounded by the overly exuberant and true-hearted. These were happy kids, overflowing with wild stories and smiles that came close to blinding me, and I loved being around them. Working there was the equivalent of contagious-laugh-therapy, but that’s not the focus of this story. Paint is.
The principal of this school was a quiet man, the obvious inventor of patience. In the 3 years I worked there, he told me what to do only once, when he said “lots of leaves on the yard, Mister Thompson.” He told me something else, too, that wasn’t really an order or even a suggestion. He said paint is the best remedy for the blahs that often sneak into a school, usually later in the school year.
During the summers, the kids were gone, the teachers were gone, the principal was gone, and I wasn’t. There were hundreds of chores to get done, from the mundane like cleaning everything to the more demanding, like stripping and waxing floors. The principal understood that I was up against it, and he told me to do the high priority stuff, like the floors and carpets, and if time was running away from me, to paint things.
Classroom walls took a beating during the school year and had to be cleaned up, so I painted them just a shade darker than they had been, or a shade lighter. The difference was immediately apparent and it was a nice difference, but the true breath-taking wonder of paint was shown when something new had been built or rebuilt.
I wasn’t a carpenter, but I was willing to try nearly anything, so I muddled through and things generally looked okay. But the difference between a carpenter’s work and my work was found in the way this piece of 1×4 lined up with that one over there. A carpenter’s junctions would be unnoticeable but mine looked kind of like strip mines in size and smoothness. No matter what I did, those gaps and speed-bumpy looking things wouldn’t go away, so I painted them.
Magic. It was magic. The entire structure that I’d rebuilt looked to be glistening with white paint, and no mistakes could be seen, if a guy stayed far enough away. It was like a construction miracle, and no one ever commented about anything other than how good it looked and what a fine job I’d done. That’s when I saw the wisdom in my principal’s devotion to paint, and I adopted it, too.
Paint is forgiving. If you have a 20 foot run of something, like base moulding, and you just can’t get it to match up, paint it as an accenting piece. Give it a slightly different color than the wall, either lighter or darker, but not too far removed on the color spectrum. If you have drywall to fix, tape it and mud it, then paint it and walk away. No one will notice without a magnifying glass.
Even those old door casings will glow when you apply some paint, and windows, too. Just like everything else today, paint has gone up in price, but when you see what it can do, you’ll regard it as a bargain like you’ve never seen. We’re friends now, paint and I, mostly because it’s made my life easier. And, by the way, if you drip a little paint on the carpet, don’t sweat it. Put a lamp over it and go watch “This Old House.”