I hate painting. No, I’m serious. I hate painting. So i had this bright idea to paint my bedroom. Actually the bug hit me about a year or so ago but I never got up the gumption to do it. Well, i suppose that the fever of the new year filled my lungs and put me into action. Dear Lord, I wish it hadn’t.

See, I love fixing things up. It’s not that I’m bad at painting either. In fact I was dead on with what I thought my bedroom would look like with the color I had picked out in my head. The problem is that painting sucks. A lot.

My woes first started when i decided to paint my room red. 1) Everyone says bedrooms shouldn’t be red because it’s too intense, that I’d never sleep well. 2) Bubba Handyman at Home Depot warned me that painting deep red over white is a nightmare…that i’d need a primer first or else suffer the torture of having to do 5-6 coats to get it right. Well of course I decide to sidestep these pearls of wisdom, chalking the advice up to the fact that Mr. Man just wanted more of my american dollars. Well, I’m here to preach the gospel of Paint Advice. Listen to them peoples at Home Depot. They’re not kidding.

At about wall 1.5, I realized that this was assinine. I felt like every stroke I made only made things worse. After 3 coats on the first 1.5 walls, I hit the bottom of the gallon that I had bought. Doh. “More than one gallon? Surely not,” spoke my ego as I been shopping the previous weekend. Again, mea culpa.

So, back to the friendly orange store to admit defeat. $60 more and 3 cans later (2 paint, 1 primer in pepto pink) I swallowed my pride and began painting my walls pink. Although I contemplated leaving them such a trendy color, I figured my landlord wouldn’t be so hip to the idea, so I started on the red.

Three days, 4 gallons of paint and 6 coats and I finally finished. While I love how it looks now, I don’t think I’d do it again seeing as I don’t know how much longer I’ll be living here. Combine that with the fact that I never told my landlord that I was painting in the first place (please, like he can’t smell the fumes…i’ve been sleeping in my room for the duration of the project and have maintained a pretty substantial buzz for the 8 days that it took.)

But now that I look at it, the dining room could use a little touching up. Maybe a nice bungalow tan…