About the spilled paint.

The Viking went to a national youth conference in Florida last week. I’ve had a slow month work wise and so I was starting to feel a bit stir crazy, and staring down four days of being on my own with a 1 year old was fairly intimating to say the least. I needed a project.

I made a list of all the things that I could do over the weekend and settled on painting our bedroom. The only room in our house that has remained unpainted since we moved in — three years ago. I have a habit of throwing myself headlong into projects without doing any prep, or really thinking things through, but this time… this time I was going to do it right.

I moved everything to the center of the room, I put drop cloths on everything, I taped off the ceiling and the baseboards, removed the outlet covers, I made sure that I had a drop cloth for the floor as I moved around the room. I made sure I had enough paint to finish the project, and I tried out 6 different paint colors for the accent wall.

I realize that for most people this is just a normal part of painting a room, but I usually just wing it so this was A LOT of prep for me. I was feeling pretty good about it too. Congratulating myself for doing this project right, and not making a huge mess. The paint on the accent wall had just finished drying, and I was starting to move everything back into place and clean up all the drop cloths.

And then I moved our bed.

And it hit the shoe rack.

Upon which two cans of gray paint rested.

Many, many colorful words escaped my foul mouth at that moment as I realized that I had knocked almost and entire gallon of dark gray paint onto the exposed carpet.

Not just the carpet, it had splattered the entire wall, and the baseboards that I had so carefully taped, with the accent wall color.

Thank Jesus that Ransom was sleeping. Immediately I scooped up what I could with my hands, and did spent the next two hours working to clean up the paint spill. I called my neighbor when Ransom woke up and begged her to take him for an hour while I finished cleaning up the paint, and I basically threw him in her arms and went back to scrubbing. Once I cleaned up as much of the paint as I could, I also had to clean my entire bathroom and tub because of the mess that cleaning up a gallon of paint makes and by the end of it my whole body ached. That night after Ransom went to bed, I had to repaint the wall on that side of the room because it had been splattered so badly.

I thought I got most of it out of the carpet and that it was actually going to be okay until it started drying. Then I saw truly what a mess I’d made. RIGHT on the viking’s side of the bed. RIGHT inside the door where you can’t hide it. On our light beige carpet.

So much for all my prep work.

Its been a long time since I’ve made that dumb of a mistake. Especially since I’ve been trying so damn hard to stop throwing myself into projects without adequate preparation and thought.

I felt defeated.

Ultimately its not the end of the world. Y’know? Shit happens, people make mistakes and spill paint, and I was able to find some runner rugs to cover 90% of the stain, but my entire value as a person plummeted after the incident. I’d spent all weekend working on this project to make our bedroom look good, and all I’d managed to do was make a bigger mess, like why even try?

Thoughts ran rampant through my head “Why even try, its not worth it.” “You try so hard and then fail.” “The Viking is gonna be pissed, you literally destroyed his side of the room.” “You suck at this.” “You call yourself a creative?”

And I listened to them. I gave them space. All my will to resist them was nowhere to be found. I agreed with them.

Thankfully, the Viking came home. And he spoke truth to me that I couldn’t speak to myself, (this is why community is important folks) and he told me that the room looked beautiful, and shit happens, and that I shouldn’t stop trying to be creative just because I spilled a can of paint.

I’m still not totally over it. I still look directly at the spot whenever I walk into the room even though its mostly covered by a rug now. I’m not sure there is a moral to this story. Some sort of nice lesson that wraps it all up nicely in a bow. I just have a spot on my carpet that will remind me of one of my greatest home owning failures until the carpet is replaced.

The carpet replacement timeline has been accelerated though…