After getting my floors refinished, I noticed that the baseboard in one of the rooms had orange, green and yellow markings that did not look good with my "new" floor. I mentioned to my daughter and friends that I would paint the area to cover the colors that the room had been in the past. No one agreed with me and I heard, "It is harder than you think, repainting is hard work, the fumes will overwhelm you, get someone else to do it, how will you get up once down on the floor," and so on. In my mind I pictured myself lowering myself to the floor, sitting on a cushion and agile and handy as ever!
I shopped at Lowes for paint that matched the room, two small brushes, and wide blue tape. Yesterday I decided to put the blue tape along the floor so that the new floor would not get painted. Nothing was as I had pictured it. As I slowly lowered myself to the cushion, I missed it and ended up on the hard floor. I tried pulling and pushing the cushion underneath me, but I could not raise my body high enough to slip the cushion beneath me!
Somehow, the best position to put the tape down was leaning on my elbows and before long they hurt. Then I tried sitting with my legs crossed and that hurt my hip area. I tried to get to my knees and couldn't. I prayed and somehow, with the floor feeling like it was as if there was no skin, just hard floor and bone I scooted around the four walls of the room and I had the blue tape in position. Now came the hard part of me trying to stand up!
Before starting the blue tape chore, I brought a chair to use to help me get up but it did not help. My muscles did not have the strength to pull me up on the chair. I managed to get up on my knees and hands, push with my hands, get my rear up in the air and stand up. Today I will begin painting but I will sit in a chair and bend from my waist to paint the baseboard. I will see how that goes!
How odd that in my mind the scenario is so different than the reality! Something that should have taken about 1/2 hour took me over an hour.
Today I shook the can of paint, opened the can by prying edges with a screwdriver, poured a bit of paint into a cottage cheese container, picked the small brush and I was ready to paint. Bending over and painting seemed to be the best way but before long my back began to hurt. I pulled up the chair and that helped my back but it bothered my hips. Slowly I made my way around the room until the baseboard was painted. The color I had picked was lighter than the wall but what the heck, white looked better than the orange, green and yellow!
I did have one splatter on my floor but it cleaned up right away and I carried a damp paper towel with me in case I splattered again. Luckily, there were no more drips. The next move is removing the blue tape to see if any white had seeped to the floor! I am glad the job is done, my hips hurt and I am walking slower than yesterday!
My advice to anyone over seventy is don't try to do a paint job yourself unless you can run up and down steps, sit on the floor and get up without aid and are agile enough to do summersaults!
"If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint,
then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
Vincent Van Gogh
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