More paint

Last night I dreamed that I was married to a middle-aged polygamist who looked exactly like Agatha Christie's Poirot. In the dream I also had just had thirteen boys- at once. And you though septuplets was bad.

Maybe I should have realized this morning that after a dream like that my day could hardly be normal.

After church was all set to charge right into my latest amusement- getting my room ready to paint. At the rate I am going I'll be prepping til doomsday with nary a drop of paint to show for it!

Megan came up to help me and we merrily banged in nail pops, filled dings and holes, sanded bumps, and washed walls. The number of things I have to do before I actually get to the walls keeps growing: I need to finish prep, sand and paint the ceiling, sand the woodwork (of which there is a considerable amount), prime woodwork, and tape things up. One whole wall of the room is actually wood doors to my closet. I took down all of them and was working on sanding down the varnish on the framework when the real excitement began.

Sanding the frame had the funniest side affect- things on the upper shelves would vibrate to the edge and fall off. A small can of paint hit me on the shoulder, and a little while later a aerosol can of static stopper hit me right on the head. That was mildly amusing (and painful), but I was blissfully unaware of darker evil lurking above, just waiting to be vibrated off....

I had just sent Megan down to the Main House for more dropcloths and was on a stepstool continuing to sand the framework, my head safely above the danger of falling objects, when I heard a thump. I looked down at the floor to see what else had fallen and roared in complete horror. A quart can of brick-red paint lay on its side on the carpet with the lid off!

Now most of you probably don't keep random quarts of paint in your clothes closet, but I do. I had bought it on sale at Home Depot, and was hoarding it until the right surface came along. THIS WAS NOT IT!!!!

There, in the middle of my tan carpet was a spreading, oozing pool of very red paint. Disaster of the first magnitude! Pain! Agony! Frustration! This kind of thing is not supposed to happen! I leaped down, grabbed the nearest receptacle- a purple mop bucket- grabbed the paint can and dumped it in. Then I found a putty knife and started scooping, using the knife and my hand. Ridiculous! Nothing comes out of carpets. I ran to the intercom to call the kitchen of the Main House, told Sarah to tell Megan to grab rags and GET UP HERE RIGHT NOW!!!! I was feverishly scooping paint when she arrived.

She called Dad on the cellphone for advice, while I continued to roar (and pray) in the background. Suddenly from the other side of the closed door Grandma asked, "Are there people dying in there?" Silence. "No Grandma," I answered, "Not many people, just a couple." That satisfied her for the moment. Megan got me a bowl of soapy water and ran down to the garage for the shop vac.

The place looked like a particularly dramatic scene from ER, with instruments scattered about, and blood everywhere.

I kept playing with the paint- pouring on soapy water to keep it all wet and trying unsuccessfully to transfer it to the bucket with my hands. At one point while I was waiting for Megan to return I had one of those brilliant moments of inspiration which come to me under stress. The end of an extension cord had gotten into the paint. I grabbed it with my painty, soapy wet hands and used them to clean out the holes. Of course it was plugged in, and of course I got zapped. I put it down.

Megan returned with the shop vac. While she continued to dump water on the spot, I sucked it up with the hose, and the shop vac spat it out onto the wall. We abandoned the shop vac in favor of wailing to Gerry for help. At this point I could no longer hide the situation from Grandma. Thankfully she didn't hit the roof (she rarely does). In fact she had the brilliant idea of using her rug shampoo machine.

Megan left for dinner, Gerry went to look up advice for the situation on the internet, and I started vacuuming. Dump water on rug, scrape rug with putty knife, suck up water with vacuum, pull out water container and dump in toilet, fill bowl with water, dump on carpet, scrape, vacuum, dump, fill, dump, scrape, vacuum, dump.... two hours later the water was still coming up painty and the carpet stubbornly blushed a pale pink.

Fine, I like pink carpet.


Points on removing paint from carpet

1. DO NOT let it dry!
2. Get as much of it up as you can before you start dumping on water. Try blotting it with rags.
3. When you do start dumping on water, pour it around the edge of the spill, then use something to scrape it in toward the center. I didn't do this to start with, and the result was a six-inch spill spreading over three feet of carpet.
4. Rug shampoo machines work great! We have one, so let us know if you ever plan to dump paint on your carpet. We would be more than happy to lend it to you.
5. Putty knives are a great tool for scrapping water around and encouraging the paint up.
6. 1/2 quart of paint can discolor a large section of carpet, and tint endless gallons of water.
7. No carpet is worth bursting a blood vessel over.

Interestingly enough, I think the bigger the physical catastrophe, the more relaxed I become. It is so clearly beyond me to fix, that I find it easy to turn it over to God. There are few more permanent combinations than dark paint and a light carpet, and I felt so helpless as I started to scrape it up. BUT there is something almost refreshing about a mistake of this magnitude- I really cannot go back in time to change this, nor can I be sure that the end results are going to be perfect. I will now do my best to fix the problem, but the results are ultimately up to God. It was funny how cheerful I felt during those two hours. When Grandma came in to sympathize my response was,

"You know what? God is good!" What is one old carpet and two hours extra work compared with his goodness and love and care of me?

Now I am going to sleep, and pray I do not have any more weird dreams.