I suffer household projects like a calf being roped by some pretentious “cowboy,” only to be dumped unceremoniously onto the ground for the amusement of a few hundred hick spectators. That is, I whine a lot, squeal, and call for my mama.

The remodeling of the guest bathroom was typical then.

Originally perfectly functional, though somewhat worn, and admittedly a little ugly, the guest bathroom was deemed to have somehow committed crimes unspeakable in polite company and sentenced to undergo re-imaging.

Commence squealing.

There I am curled up in a ball on the floor, wondering when mother will come, sucking my thumb and wishing it was a beer, realizing that no parental rescue will be arriving, and that I had just better suck it up and get this thing done so I can get back to beer and all those things that I actually enjoy.

As with all those damn room makeover shows, the first item on the torture checklist is ripping everything out of the room, and then, the often un-televised second item, finding somewhere to put all that crap in the interim.

Next phase in the plan is to render the bathroom completely and utterly non-functional: comprising of removing half of the toilet and taping up drop sheets around the stuff that you don’t want paint to splatter on, that is: everything that you are not painting.

With a guest bathroom that is no longer functioning on any sort of guest bathroom-ish level you proceed to the next step: wall paper removal.

I thank the entities above I did not have to get involved in that process.

I will however curse the entities above for the necessity of involving me in the process of sand painting.

Sand paint is a type of texture paint that is a jewel in the crown of Beelzebub. Thick as soggy clay, it resists going anywhere your roller/brush attempts to coax it. Think of a screaming kid throwing a fit in the middle of say, a grocery store, while its on-the-edge parental figure tries to soothe it. That is sand paint. Maybe quieter.

After the sand paint came the joint compound to be slathered in a mish mash of arcs across the walls for a stucco-like finish. At which point I pleaded for sanity and asked why the necessity for the damn sand paint: to which I was informed that there would be patches left in the joint compoundy swathes through which the sand paint would show giving the impression of stucco that had fallen off.

Great, I am remodeling a bathroom to make it look older than when I started.

I ran for the hills, and did not return until the faux stucco was in place and well and truly dried.

To be fair, when it comes to texturing there actually can be too many chefs in the kitchen – a person has their own particular way of texturing – having more than one doing it ends up with some sections looking one way, the other looking another. This is a classy operation I am running here, folks.

Next chapter in this already exceeded its welcome project is actually painting the walls with, gasp, color.

Will someone explain to me why it is that whenever I paint, I end up with clothing, skin and hair that anyone would look at and wonder: Dude, did you run out of brushes and just use whatever was handy?

I thought I had done a perfectly good job at painting all the nooks and crannies of the stucco texture until I re-installed the light kit above the mirror.

“Let there be light”

*flicks switch*

A moment passes…

“Fuck.”

That is how I ended up giving the walls and the ceiling a second coat of paint. It appears the light of day compares poorly with the light of six 60 watt bulbs when determining if you’ve done a good painting job or not. Whistling while I worked was certainly not the order of business that day, instead I consoled myself by coming up with creatively colorful curses which I muttered under my breath as I used whatever parts of my body were available (and sometimes a brush) to get the second coat on.

Finally it was done. The slightly worn, slightly ugly guest bathroom is gone, replaced with a newer-older, but pretty damn spiffy looking one, and I can sit back down on my toilet, look around at all the hard work, smile, and think:

“Fuck, I have to tile the floor now.”