How Not to Paint a Kitchen

Today Dianne and I were part of a crew of 23 people (sorry if we miscounted and left out anyone) who gathered at the Sojourner House in Hamilton to paint and fix-up several of the apartments there and the common space. The event was well organized and there had been a lot of pre-work done by a few of the folks. The planning group had scouted the place, estimated the materials needed (paint, blinds, flooring, etc.), and bought or got donations for everything. If anything, we were a bit short on cleaning supplies to prep the walls and spruce up the place.

We aren't experienced painters. We were put in one of the kitchens. It took us the better part of the day to clean the walls a bit (we had help with baseboards) and do some prep work, put on two coats of paint, and clean up. I think we were the slowest painters in the group. The moulding and trim around the doorways and the two windows seemed to take forever. Also, the plaster on one of the walls wasn't in good shape so the wall was very bumpy and hard to paint. There were also a lot of odd things to paint, paint behind, or avoid: hot water heat pipes, a radiator that was about a million degrees according to Dianne, electrical conduit, cabinets, you name it. In our defense, one of our paint brushes wasn't much bigger than a toothbrush -- that didn't help.

I'm sure some of the more experienced folks on the crew could have completed that in half a day, but at least we helped out. With everyone chipping in, quite a few of the apartments were fixed up. The place really did need some work and the effort made a huge difference.

We are tired tonight!