Category Archives: doggy dreamhouse?

Finally.

We get to the fun part.

After a year or so of building and after several years of planning and designing, Miss Carol and me started doing the fun stuff.

No,no,no, not THAT fun stuff.

I mean the fun stuff that is the finish work on The Little House of Horrors.

On Friday I installed the kitchen cabinets and then my little brother and me and a friend of my little brother’s finished roughing in the island and laid the plywood for the counter tops.

She’s starting to look more like the adult playhouse I’d envisioned and less like the excruciatingly painful labor fest that she’s been.

It’s fun now.

Over the decades and centuries that Miss Carol and me have been married I’ve slowly realized that no matter how much room we had, no matter how big or small a house we had, when we have people over, they’d all congregate and cluster in the kitchen.

So-somehow learning from these life lessons- I made the main living space in The Little House of Horrors mostly all kitchen and all of it mostly adult style playroom.

There is no living room or den or Me Only Room- there’s just the main living area/kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a media room (can we say 8′ porn? yes oh yes, I think we can).

It’s gonna be everything we need to continue our little life of self-indulgence.

And it was while I was taking these pictures that I suddenly realized The Little House of Horrors might actually be slowly evolving into The Church of Adult Fun and here I was, staring at her altar.

Can I get an aMEN?

Can I get a Praaaaaiiiiise Jeeeeesus?

I think I can.

The Little House of Horrors has walls. And ceilings.

I had originally wanted to plaster the walls and ceilings and leave them the hard plaster white and let the paintings, southern yellow pine trim, tile, and hardwood floors provide the color.

Miss Carol had other ideas. She not only wanted to paint the walls and ceiling, but paint them different colors and add a strongly contrasting wall in the bedrooms.

So.

After spending the last coupla weekends painting I’ve discovered some fundamental DO’s and DON’T’s to follow when forced to paint an entire house by yourself and against your will.

DO’s

• Spend the extra money and buy quality brushes and rollers. A craftsman is only as good as his tools, right?
• Wear clothes you won’t mind throwing away once the painting nightmare is over. Trust me- you won’t want them or their memories.
• Listen to the pretty music. Plug in your earbuds and rock out. Painting drywall is mindlessly repetitive boredom that drains the soul and atrophies the mind. A shuffling playlist blaring into your head helps numb the pain and makes you feel like a rock and roll hero.
• Dwell on how much of your life is speeding by while you needlessly paint walls- the annoyance’ll make you work that much harder.

DON’T’s

• Don’t think.
• Or if you do- don’t estimate how many square feet your roller will cover before you need to load it up again.
• Or if you do that- don’t go down to your truck and get your tape measure and check your square footage estimate.
• Or if you do that– don’t estimate how many times you’re gonna have to load up your roller before you finish rolling out the first of two unnecessary coats of paint on the ceiling. (why oh why can’t white paint cover white drywall in one coat??)
• Or if you do THAT– don’t start counting.
• And definitely DO NOT think about having to do this all over AGAIN next weakend.

Just listen to the pretty music.

I’m an overachiever- I know that about myself. Or maybe I’m an overreacher.

Or maybe I’m just a flippin’ retard.

Whatever it is that I am and however it relentlessly pushes me, it propelled me yet again this weekend.

It started on Thursday with bunches of pictures of paint selections and the hopeful oohing and aahing and wishfulness that flairs when dreams are in the air.

And then when Miss Carol and me agreed on colors for the exterior of The Little House of Horrors, I immediately decided that this was the ONE and ONLY weekend to paint the house. Fretting, I worried that if we waited, all would be lost- I’m gonna be working the next several weekends- and then winter would be swooping in and the whole house’d be reduced to the sulking and moldering dampness of loserness.

I HAD to paint this weekend.

SO. THE DREAM-

I’d planned on renting a 45′ articulating 4-wheel drive lift and drive around The Little House of Horrors probingly insect-like, spraying her with paint as fast as I could move.

I figured I’d be home in time for brunchie brunch and a cool cocktail.

THEN. THE sad REALITY-

There were no lifts to be had, so Me and Crockett (one of Phabulous Phil’s guys) spent ten hours spraying Pro-Block primer on Saturday, humping 40′ ladders and cleaning the rental gun every 5 minutes. What a piece of crap.

Then, on Sunday, we continued the humping of 40 footers and sprayed color using my little one gallon sprayer. And ooh baby, baby, talk about the tiny train that could- I’d kiss her if she wasn’t so painty.

But it was exhausting. Even my hair is sore.

Then.

Miss Carol just told me maybe I should just leave and drive a truck- that maybe we’d be happier- that maybe we wouldn’t be keeping our lives on hold.

I don’t know how to take that yet.

It’s something I’ve known and dreaded.

Painting.

*tortured sigh*

On my way to work this morning I stopped at the paint store and snatched up every possible color brochure thingy. I’m not good with colors and need lots of pictures showing all the different combinations that talented designers recommend. Plus, it tends to confuse Miss Carol.

Can we say delay? Can we whisper, hopefully maybe never?

And I’m thinking that in the next month or so, maybe, Miss Carol and me can agree on a color. I mean, the Little House of Horrors needs to get painted, she’s started to show that 5 o’clock shadow of neglect and loserness. Unfortunately, my hurry-ness has snuggled up right behind my want for a root canal.

But being a responsible kinda guy, I keep pushing ever onward and on my way home I stop by Sunbelt Rentals to check on the price and availability of a 45′ articulating lift (’cause i’m a pussy and there’s no way i’m painting a 3-story house on ladders and if I have to do this at least I get to play with construction equipment?) hoping against hope that it’d be prohibitively expensive and I can convince Miss Carol we really need to pay somebody, anybody, to paint our Little House of Horrors, but that ain’t happenin’, so me and The Little House of Horrors have a playdate.

That’s cool, I’m thinkin, I can deal with that, knowing that Miss Carol still has to look at and digest and decide on a color scheme after she goes through the many million paint hint thingies I brought home. It’ll be months, I’m thinking. I’m sipping a beer feeling pretty good about a no-paint future and watching Man vs. Food when Miss Carol chirps brightly- Ok, I’ve narrowed it down to these four.

WAAAAAAAAAATTTFFFF?

So I go look and damn if I don’t like them too and I point out the two that I really like and Miss Carol agrees and raises me and says she really, really likes this one and I call and have to admit I like it too and there you have it.

Bling-time.

The weather over the next five days is supposed to be picture perfect so now all the sudden I’ve got to try and get Sunbelt to deliver the lift tomorrow and get the paint and rent a sprayer and spend the weekend putting the bling on our Little House of Horrors.

Pinch me when this gets fun.

I haven’t written about the Little House of Horrors lately mostly because her constant needs and wants suck everything out of me.

Vampiric-like, the Little House of Horrors is slowly, inexorably, draining me of everything I might call happiness or life or even a simple justification of existence.

Building a house is a marathon- it’s not for the faint of heart, nor is it for the happy-go-luckys that think something like this might be FUN. It ain’t. It’s grueling. And it’s at it’s gruelingnest right now. It’s still in the pre-close-in stage, everything’s still rough as a cob, and it seems like the Little House of Horrors will ultimately resist being built and laugh heartily and long when I collapse, spent and unfinished.

So I don’t write about her and try not to think about her too much hoping that maybe, just maybe, by ignoring the Little House of Horrors, she’ll somehow relent.

But hey, at least the electric’s done.

And, yeah, I can’t wait for the phallic jokes. GO.