Norman Rockwell is a liar. He painted nostalgic pictures of children laughing with their families while creating happy childhood memories. Not one person looks like they are yelling that they just “spent a King’s Ransom on this, so look like you’re having fun!”
Which is how you know the event is fake.
At this point in my parenting career, I’m guessing Ol’ Normie was an absentee father. He’d roll in late to some family event, spike everyone’s drinks and paint the aftermath. Which is what I would do if I was smart. Yet every time my daughters ask me to do a DIY project with them, I foolishly agree, like a Stockholm syndrome victim. Or a menopausal woman who has no long-term memory and cries a lot about the eventuality of them going to college and also can’t find her phone.
My daughter’s bathroom looked like it was designed by a Disney princess who also sipped Rockwell-roofied punch. Yellow wallpaper with orange polka dots decorated every square inch. The decor, reminiscent of rejects from Beauty and the Beast. “You and you - back to being human. You…not so much. You’re going to stay an ugly white light fixture because I don’t even want to think about what’s going on underneath that sconce. And a yellow sink? Have you no shame? Now take that grotesque towel rack and go hang out with Tolkien’s crew.” When we purchased the home, it came with the promise that I would paint the bathroom, a fact that she has reminded me of once or twice an hour since. It came with the caveat that she had to clean her room to start the project, which is why it has taken four years for us to get to this point.
Here’s how I am imagining the weekend: she and I will pick out paint and all the fun fluffy girly stuff to go with it. We’ll laugh while we remove memories of past occupants, nibbling on snacks and sharing gossip about the inner lives of teenagers, laughing until we stop. She will tell future generations of the amazing childhood she had, thanks to her amazing mom.
Which is totally how it happened. Except not at all.
First up for our DIY weekend, choosing the color. “Ugh, I don’t know, Mom. Blue?” Well, there are 6,749 different blues. Thanks for narrowing it down. After spending $7,000,000 at the hardware store for the project necessities, I grabbed a large, iced coffee, but should have grabbed a magnum of Veuve instead.
I didn’t realize the extent of the destruction in Guantanamo Bathroom, because her bedroom looks like a hoarder and napalm had a love child. Going into that chaos makes me itchy and convinced that Darwin would have found an iteration of some exotic bug that wants to kill me in my sleep. I enter long enough to wake her up for school, then run away so hopefully none of the killer insects hop onto my pants to start their death march. The idea of what is going on in her bathroom is therapy worthy.
Well, apparently my child has been “prepping” by peeling shards of the wallpaper like she’s being recruited by the KGB. Or maybe she was practicing for an ice carving competition? The walls had survived things outlawed by the Geneva Convention. This coupled with the fact that they apparently used Gorilla Glue instead of the traditional wallpaper paste created a 5’x8’ horror show. I’m pretty sure I am keeping Lowe’s in the black just from the Olympic sized swimming pool amount of wallpaper remover required for the task. Which was like painting with blue jelly, only messier and far less delicious.
My daughter was super helpful throughout “our DIY project.” Norman would have to situate the light just right to capture the essence of her eyes rolling. “OMG, Mom. I just went downstairs; can’t you get your own drink?” while I’m choking through a cloud of sheetrock. She did, however, stop me every 30 seconds to watch some stupid TikTok video, which was awesome because I was hoping it would take me at least three months to finish this weekend project.
Two days, one “how exactly did you break your hand sander?” and a fistful of Advil later, the paper was finally off. Now on to the reconstruction process. It was like an anthropologist trying to restore a skull that had just been thrown through a woodchipper. Just how much spackle can one tiny bathroom space hold? It turns out so, so much. It would have been easier to demo the walls or burn the place to the ground.
Once the walls were painted, the off-white trim looked like the ceilings in the houses of every smoker in the 70s, which meant another trip for paint. There was also a small electrical fire when I yanked a wire that was inconveniently attached to a light fixture which shall never be discussed because it totally didn’t happen. In an unrelated note, I now know where the GFCI button is, which stands for Go Freaking Call the Insurance Company, or something like that.
Three weeks after I began this two-day project, I finally hammered the lid shut on the Pinch Me I’m Dreaming Blue Valspar can that has been dripping all over the carpet of my daughter’s bedroom. I learned it tipped over after she “stood on it to kill a bug,” which is likely one that snuck out from the recesses of her closet to plot my untimely demise. Her sole responsibility for the project was to clean up the blue wallpaper remover jelly blobs that burped onto the floor. Which means they will likely be there until she gets married. I may have to scrape some of it up for her “something blue,” using her favorite painting tool of choice, an ice pick.
Tracy Winslow is the owner of Low Country Shrimp and Knits - the premier yarn store in the Low Country. Please buy your yarn and knitting/crochet notions from her at shrimpandknits.com so she can hire someone else to DIY with her family from now on. Or at least someone to tell them no the next time they ask.
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