This play should be titled, “Idiot with Oil-Based Paint”

I set aside the scraping and re-painting of the downstairs bedroom as a winter project, I guess, because it’s indoors. That or I just knew what a pain in the ass it would be. This job has nothing to recommend it. The bedroom is small and full to overflowing with old furniture. I have to turn sideways at one point to get into bed! First came moving most of that crap out of the bedroom and into the other equally crowded rooms.

We painted and papered this room rather quickly over a weekend about 14 or 15 years ago. I have decided to attempt to salvage the wallpaper. I sort of like it. It’s old-fashioned, tan background with rosy colored roses. Yeh, I know. I’m turning into an old…

Anyway, this is not the oldest room in my house but probably the second oldest. Late 17 hundreds perhaps. The wainscoting is wide and at some point was painted with a milk-based paint. Then, that was followed by many coats of lead-filled oil-based paint, before it dawned on someone, namely me, that milk-based paint will shed any paint except milk-based paint. Thus, the continual peeling and cracking of the wainscoting, doors and trim in the room. Did I mention there are four doors in this room? There are five in the dining room which was originally a separate house. Did I mention the wallpaper covers about two thirds of the walls.

I wasn’t looking forward to the scraping since my experience with this led me to understand that all the paint coats will come off except the milk. The milk will have been so absorbed by the wood over the centuries that the wood would have to be planed to get it naked again. So I started scraping yesterday. I finished today, breathing hard into my respirator and sweating profusely. I filled half a kitchen garbage barrel with paint chips and my big wet dry vac. I used three scrapers with new blades. That’s the wainscoting only!

So, late today I painted it all with a calcimine paint re-coater. It’s sort of thick like plaster but you paint it on. It’s the only thing that will cover milk and then accept a modern latex paint. The re-coater is an oil-based product and clean up has to be with mineral spirits. That means I got it everywhere: on me, on the floor despite the commercial drop cloth, on the radiators, on the kitchen and dining room floors.

For a few minutes I wandered about the stage murmuring loudly to myself while holding a mineral spirit laden cloth that I occasionally would dab on the floor, the wall, the furniture, myself. Trust me: a French lunatic asylum has nothing on my home!