I have spent most of the last five days painting - not sat by the canal with an easel and a box of watercolours, pretending I am Monet - but a laborious shoulder burning and wrist aching undercoat and two topcoats of walls and ceilings. I can't even pretend I'm Michaelangelo because it's all one colour.
Mind you, the end result is as sexy as the Sistine Chapel with sunlight cascading through the stained glass and the best choir in the world on top form belting out Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthews Passion. It's damn good. It's so damn good it's fantastic. My wife, to whom I sent a picture of said paintwork over the wonder of the modern interweb thing, was equally beside herself with joy, which means I feel a little less stressed about her imminent arrival this weekend to check on the progress of all things building related.
Now I never doubt my wife's interior design capability, her knowledge of colours and typefaces and everything designer in any sort of designer field you could care to mention is second to none, but I was well impressed by the matching of the paint colour to the tile colour and the resultant overall cool look of our walk-through his and hers shower room. The tiles, as previously mentioned, were bought here in France, and the paint was bought in London and brought down to Carcassonne in the back of a van last September. The remarkable thing is that the paint colour was chosen with only the memory of the tiles for reference and the match is perfect. Oh, she's so very good at this interior design stuff and we now have a sexy bathroom to prove it - well once we've finished fitting the sink tops and the sinks and the grouting and mounting the towel rails and, oh God, still lots to do.
I don't really mind painting but I can't really do the edges. I have always had shaky hands - yes, even before I reached the age of alcoholic consent - so trying to paint a straight line between say, wall and ceiling, has always been a problem. I start off okay but by the end of the day, when I'm getting tired and my arm feels like lead, it looks like I was painting in an earthquake.
I do mind sanding. According to the Genius, when you get to sanding, you know it's nearly done. Yeh, but I'm doing the sanding and it's a crap job. The so-called 'workmen' who converted this building decided to spray all the walls in the apartment and studio with some sort of splatter shite that covered a multitude of sins, mostly not very well or discreetly. If I knew the French for cowboy I would now use it. After much deliberation, 'we' have decided that 'I' should sand the top off said splatter shite so that 'he' can then plaster over it to give us a much better looking and lovely smooth wall. I know that plastering is by far the more skillful task and I respect that totally, but the picture says everything about the experience of sanding - and I had a protective face mask on! Only about 30 sqm to go.
All that white powder leads me onto the change in the weather. It might have been Spring on Saturday but it is most definitely back to Winter today. I awoke to temperatures at least 15 degrees colder and intermittent heavy showers which have slowly turned to sleet and then snow as nightfall arrived. I am sure that there has been much snow on the Montagne Noire to the north and the Pyrenees to the south. Not only was the salad supper that I had in mind completely inappropriate, I have had to put a jumper on, close all the windows (which traps the paint fumes nicely inside) and put the really expensive electric heating on again. At least it might kill the mosquitos.
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