Smart as Paint
I live in an apartment which is, very evidently, several decades old. The age of my home is made apparent in lots of little details: the crooked floors, more creak than wood; the funny cupboard in the kitchen that would have housed an ironing board; and, perhaps most obvious, the rather shabby paint job. Like most rented apartments, it is painted white, but not consistently. The kitchen and my little office have had their doorframes and baseboards painted the same colour as the walls, but the hallway and bathroom and our strange little living room (originally a closet) feature badly stained wooden frames and baseboards along the floor, which have not been painted white, but do have evidence of the 'landlord’s special’ - a quick, sloppy paint job, with little flecks and globs of paint marring the wood. The wood is not high quality, by any means, but it is not improved by the drips and drops of white paint. Add to this the fact that the most recent coat of paint was actually baseboard paint, so it is glossy, which means that every wall in our apartment is vaguely shiny, highlighting every lump and bubble, every uneven surface, every mark. The result is not ideal.
I am of two minds about this situation, dear reader. Part of me thinks that this sort of paint job is just part and parcel of living in a rented space, and that there is little to be done. I am loath to move all our furniture, cover the whole place in painter’s tape and tarps, and spend weeks trying to improve the appearance of our wonky white walls. Slapping paint over the mess left by decades’ worth of sloppy contractors may not actually do very much to smarten up our shabby little home. Lipstick on a pig, sow’s ear, silk purse, and all that. Fresh paint will not change the uneven floors or the strange shape of the layout, or make the rooms different sizes. And it’s an awful lot of work.
On the other hand, we do have to live here, and the current paint makes my eyes twitch. It would be so lovely not to walk down my hallway and shudder a little at the horrible paint job, or avert my eyes from the bubble of paint over the bathroom cabinet. We might even choose a colour other than white for our rooms - perhaps not to our landlord’s taste, but certainly more pleasant and somewhat less clinical than the boring, lifeless shade which currently bedecks our walls. A pale sage, not too yellow, for my room, cream for the hallway, soft blue for the bathroom, perhaps, a muted blue-green for the bedroom - the very thought is charming. I have even gone so far as to purchase those little paint cards, the ones with the colours on them and their rather unusual names in the corners: Spring Valley, Linen, Reflecting Moment, New Day. None of these titles actually gives you much information about the colours themselves, but they are suggestive, evoking emotional reactions that seem quite separate from the actual shades and hues they represent. I think it would be a delight to work as the person who chooses the names for paint colours - how does one apply to such a post? Is there a guild, populated by the people who name crayon colours, ice cream flavours, and nail polish?
But I digress. Whether we decide to paint or not, the apartment will continue to feature a bizarre layout, ugly light fixtures, a floor full of creaks and pops, bulging walls, pitiful water pressure and a mostly-working bathtub tap. And yet, despite its many and varied flaws, I am fond of our little home - it is too full, and sometimes deeply frustrating, but it is ours - and for now, that is enough.
Jennifer