Passing The Brush

We’ve just finished painting four rooms in our house. On the basis that two of them were the laundry that runs into the hallway leading to the bedroom (the third room) some may quibble with the figure but, whichever way you count, by the time we’d finished it felt like four hundred rooms.  

I have a decorating gene inherited from my mother, who would whip out a paintbrush with alarming regularity. She was of the opinion, formed from information she’d gleaned I know not where, that bedrooms should be redecorated every five years and living areas every two. This meant there was rarely a time in our house when the hanging of wallpaper or the brushing of paint wasn’t happening. From an early age my sister and I were called upon to be useful. Our jobs ranged from tea-makers and cigarette-passers to assistants to the job in hand, scraping old paper from the walls, passing scissors. We held curling pieces of wallpaper whilst Mum scooped up gloopy paste from a bucket with a huge brush and tamed the curl, before carefully folding it onto itself at one end until the whole strip was coated. Even more carefully she lifted it to the wall, all three of us holding our breaths in case it tore, before sliding it into place alongside strips already hung, coaxing it gently into corners and trimming it neatly around windows, fireplaces, skirtings and at the top where it met the ceiling. Then we’d take the long goo-covered offcuts from her, grimacing at the slimy paste that slid across our skin like egg white.

As we aged we were allowed more responsibility, mixing the paste, wielding the brush, Mum pointing out patches we’d missed, commenting on paste too thick or too close to the edge so it slopped onto the good side. She taught me how to use the back of the scissors to mark a line along the paper where it met an obstacle before peeling it away, trimming it where marked, smoothing the neat edge back down. She was a perfectionist and sloppy work would be harshly critiqued but, as am I, she was her own fiercest critic.

With the advent of embossed wallpapers the regular room makeovers changed somewhat, existing paper left in situ and a new colour of paint applied over it instead. Different skills came into play here, the edge along the skirting, ceiling, window frame and fireplace now being drawn with a brush rather than carved with scissors. Her perfectionism wasn’t diminished in any way, a hissed intake of breath if she – or anyone else – botched the line, a cry for a damp cloth to try and repair the mistake.

Dad was on the periphery of this, called upon to paint the ceiling, maybe apply paste to wallpaper, but not allowed any important tasks like painting the woodwork or the edges of a wall. (I never heard her use the words cutting in, it was always doing the edges. I still say it.) Mostly he was at work when decorating took place, although I suspect he needed to do more overtime than usual whenever Mum announced a plan. As a teenager I heard him tell a visitor they were doomed either way: if they moved she’d hand them a paintbrush; if they sat still she’d paint them. In truth, whilst she would rope in anyone in the vicinity to help, you were only allowed to actually apply paint if your technique and skill were approved.

Mum would have loved decorating now, the comparative lack of smell of modern paint, no miasma that would hang around the house for weeks, months even. She would love the ease with which it glides on, the silky brushes that smooth it over the flattest surface with no trace of bristle lines and wash out easily with mere water – her most hated task was cleaning brushes with turps, muttering her way through the job (I take after her in so many ways) as the pungent aroma arose around her. She would always wait to light a cigarette until the lid was firmly back on the turps, which she was convinced would explode in a ball of flame, taking the house and all of us with it if so much a flake of ash, let alone a naked flame, was anywhere near it.

Whenever I don old clothes and pull out the paintbrushes Mum hovers over my shoulder and the ghosts of jobs past circle around me. In my first house I spent countless hours with my legs poking between ornate wooden balustrades, hanging over the stairs below, as I heat-gunned, chipped and sanded away at nearly a century of multiple layers, my husband-to-be somewhere applying plaster or installing a radiator. The resulting golden-warm, whorl-strewn, varnished wood finish is one of my greatest achievements.

A decade or so later when another husband-to-be suggested we strip the paint off less ornate balustrades that ran up three storeys of the high-ceilinged house we had just bought I nearly called off the wedding. In the same house I braved vertigo-inducing height, clinging to the highest rungs of a stepladder to paint deep plaster cornices that sucked up paint better than any vacuum cleaner I’ve ever had sucks up dust. This was the house into which we first introduced multiple bright colours, Neil making suggestions that I was convinced would never work until they were on the wall and made sense. This was the house (still missed over twenty years after we left it) that gave birth to the sunny yellow bedroom we were now trying to replicate, sans high ceilings and large bay window.

It was the yellow that was the problem. We’d done the prep, a good couple of days of wiping, sanding, filling, wiping. The house is about the newest house we’ve owned, but that doesn’t matter in a shaky land where buildings are necessarily made to flex. Cracks appear as soon as you turn your back, the worst between ceiling and wall, a narrow slice of wood masquerading as a cornice to please the eye (a builder once told me) meaning there’s a double line to run a caulking gun along. I may not be the best shot in the west with a caulking gun (something I don’t think my mother ever knew existed, let alone used, although she’d probably have been pretty nifty with one) but I’m not bad. It takes me a few metres to get into my stride, work out how hard to squeeze the trigger to release enough goo to fill the crack but not too much that it will spread out the side of my finger when I run it along to smooth it. A professional sharp-shooter would soon have me face down in the dust but I subscribe to my fellow perfectionist, Mum’s mantra: if anyone has a comment to make, they’re welcome to have a go themselves. Or, as Dad once said when Mum criticised her own work: If anyone says owt, tell em we’re not using them blokes again (this was the seventies when Dad believed only men were paid for painting).

Three coats in, the walls of the bedroom didn’t look so much like a bright sunny morning as the patchwork of an average New Zealand road, and we were ready to pull the whole house down let alone try a fourth coat. Bright paints are always difficult, said a friend. Well, maybe, but this isn’t the first time we’ve got on a saddle-less horse and tried to cling on as it tried to buck us off – we’ve painted a few houses in our relationship and we’ve never gone greige, never had this problem. Even Neil, the Energiser Bunny when we began the job, was mumbling oaths as, roller in hand, he trudged repeatedly up and down the stepladder.

Then there was the heat. Only we could decide to do this on what turned out to be the hottest week (fortnight) of the summer so far. By mid-afternoon, when the sun came around to the bedroom, it was like painting in a sauna. One day I was down to bra and knickers, even considering dumping the bra. We don’t recommend painting in this heat, said the assistant in the shop when we gave in and trudged to Whanganui to buy more paint. It wasn’t this hot when we started, I muttered through gritted teeth (I’m not lying – I started the job in long trousers and a merino top under my paint shirt).

We persevered, the rock playlist we’d selected petering out to snoozefest AOR long before we’d finished. We switched to an eighties vibe, the strains of Radio Gaga tugging me right back to a mid-terraced house in Sheffield early in that decade, legs dangling, fingers raw from poking sandpaper into crevices and feeding it around curves. Copious cups of tea and far too many biscuits kept us going, breaks for Friday night drinks where friends said, incredulous: you’re still painting?

Finally, nearly three weeks after we started, we’re finished. Well, almost. I still need to scrape paint off metal window frames where masking tape didn’t do its job (or maybe I hadn’t put it on correctly) and I really have no idea how I managed to completely miss painting one window, only realising as I pulled off said tape and saw clean lines. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, I’m not happy with some aspects of it, especially when compared to rooms we’ve had professionally decorated. But, if anyone notices and says anything, I’ll either hand them a brush or mutter that we’re not using them blokes again.