Does Anyone Else Have to Paint Like This?

I took on the enormous task of repainting our basement. The walls were pretty beat up from the kids. Also, there was a bunch of writing on them from our resident wall muralist. I had been putting off this task, as I knew it would be a doosie. I started out painting the walls, and quickly realized that I was going to have to do the ceiling as well. Since I was painting our ceiling anyways, I figured I may as well do a textured surface on it since the original taping job was so poor. So the mega project turned into a colossal project.

But I had CamCam to help me.

CamCam was fascinated by the paint. He so badly wanted at it. Every time I turned my back, he'd grab a brush and run to a wall. My baby was also fascinated by the paint. He was constantly crawling towards it. Once, "The Baby" reached the paint tray before I reached him and got two big fist fulls of the stuff. From that point on I blocked off a section of the room with a chair, ottoman, dinosaur toy and exersaucer turned sideways to keep him out of my paint. But CamCam cannot be contained so easily. The first thing he painted was the metal pole running down the center of our basement. It was painted black, but now the bottom half has off-white paint all over it. Many times he grabbed the roller and rolled the wall. This wasn't a very big deal, I just took it and quickly went over the area he had done and you'd never know he'd been there.

But one day I was using the roller, and had a spare laying on the ground. It didn't have a cover on it, it was just the metal frame. I didn't even realize CamCam was in the room, I thought he was upstairs watching a movie. I was walking across my carpet and stepped in something wet. I was so mad at myself for dripping paint on the carpet, and looked and realized there was paint ALL over the carpet. Then I saw CamCam in the bar area, he had the metal roller dripping paint and was "rolling" the wall. I took the roller away, and ran him to the bathroom and washed him up. His clothes were ruined, so much paint was on them and I have yet to discover if there is a way to get paint out of clothes. In the trash they went.

Now I surveyed the damage done to my carpet. I grabbed a washcloth from the bathroom and started dabbing at the paint. It wasn't going well, and no matter how gently I tried to dab, it just spread out. Not to mention that this was taking some time and the paint on the rest of the carpet was quickly drying. So I figured it was better to work fast then to work gently, and I scrubbed as much as I could off with the wet washcloth. Then I ran and got our carpet cleaner machine and went over and over the carpet. It didn't come up, but at least it was faded pretty well and when the light hits it just so, you almost can't see it.

Obviously all this carpet cleaning took quite some time, so by the time I got over to my wall to roll at it with the correct roller, the paint CamCam had got on it had dried. I rolled and rolled but I couldn't erase the ridges that the metal frame had made. I let the whole thing dry and sanded and sanded, then repainted. Ridges are still there. I gave up on it after that.

It took me 2 weeks and a lot of playing defence with CamCam to finish the ceiling, all the walls, and the massive amount of trim and doors. The end of last week is when I finally finished. It was such a great feeling! Our basement looks so fresh and new. The lighter color really opens up the room.

Then yesterday I'm in the kitchen doing dishes. I hear my hubby say: Where did CamCam get that marker? I look over and CamCam had just come up the stairs and is hunched over the top step and coloring all over our hardwood floor with red marker. He had colored all over every step on his way up before we saw him.

I hope he didn't color on your walls, my hubby says. I ran down to the basement to check my walls while he washed up the marker. I looked all over the room and couldn't see marker anywhere. I felt so lucky. I was so grateful that my hard work wasn't ruined so quickly. I didn't even punish CamCam for coloring on the stairs, I totally forgot to mention to him that what he did was wrong, I was just so happy my walls were fine.

Then later that night my husband went into our bar area to get a drink and says: Uh oh, I found where CamCam colored. Inside the bar, CamCam had colored an entire wall with red marker. Well, to be fair, it wasn't the whole wall, only three feet and lower.

I suppose I'll look on the bright side, at least I had 3 whole days of the room looking fresh and new.