During the holidays, some people deck the halls while other people get plastered. I combine the two. I plaster the halls. Nothing says Christmas like a mud knife loaded with spackle.

It began innocently enough (as all my projects seem to do). Before putting up any decorations, I decided I’d first slap a coat of paint on the walls in the entry. Just slap it on, you know, like that’s all it involves. Something as fast as a slap.

There are no slaps in the home improvement world. Well, there are, but they’re generally to the forehead. (Believe me. I know. My forehead is callused and bruised.)

One of the first things I did upon moving into our new old house last Spring was to tear down every bit of wallpaper in the entry way and stairwells. Even the ceilings had been papered. It needed to go.

Removing the paper went shockingly fast, as it was so brittle and dry it practically fell off the walls. Unfortunately, so did a lot of the plaster. After so many years together, I guess they couldn’t bear to separate. Needless to say, fixing the walls was suddenly going to be a much bigger job than the simple repainting I’d naively anticipated when I began.

Some of you are probably thinking that I’ve been a homeowner far too many years to still be so naive. It’s not really innocence so much as it is denial. 

Although we had an idea of the amount of work we were taking on when we bought this house, we expected to have some money left over from the sale of our old house to hire out some of the work. But when the old house didn’t sell (we’re now landlords), our Dream List of Improvements was transformed into what I call my List of Able Fixes–afford-able, do-able, toler-able (what exactly is “toler” anyway?).

Fortunately, I’ve always enjoyed tackling home repairs, in spite of my uncanny ability for doing that one little thing on each project that ends us causing it to take two or three (or ten) times as long as it should.  

Such was the case with the spackle. 

Although I’ve patched holes and cracks in the past, I realized this was going to be a bit more involved. (Basically, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.) After playing around with the first wall quite a bit, I finally decided to go with a slight textured pattern that would hide imperfections. But once the wall was finished and dried, I decided the pattern looked too busy.  

No big deal, I told myself. I’ll just sand it down. Slap some medium grit on the palm sander, hit the ON button, and that wall will be doubling for a baby’s bottom in no time.  

Being somewhat seasoned with sanding and the mess that it makes, I patted myself on the back for remembering to cover the floor vent air intake for the furnace with a big, heavy towel before starting the job. It wasn’t long before I looked like the sole survivor of an explosion at Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder division, covered head to toe in a fine, white dust. 

Unfortunately, so were my two loyal dogs. They now looked like Samoyeds.  

Samoyeds that were apparently feeling an urgent need to visit the yard, so I let them out.

And it started to rain. 

No big deal, I again told myself. It’ll just wash off the dust.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The rain was the perfect ingredient for turning their powdery white fur into a congealed coat of gooey plaster.

I managed to block the dogs in the entryway long enough to grab the heavy towel from the floor vent and dry them both off. Getting them clean took ages, so I suppose it’s not unexpected that by the time I finally started sanding again, I’d forgotten about the now-uncovered floor vent.Sometime during my hour of sanding, the furnace came on. Soon, every room in the house was decorated for Christmas in a way that even Martha Stewart would consider over the top.

If anyone asks, I’m going to swear it’s part of a Bing Crosby-inspired theme.

And may all your Christmases be white.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.