Living with Lockdown - 21

Picture the scene:

Nearly 5 weeks of grinding every single plank on a double storey wooden house, three coats of varnish, sanding and three coats of white paint around each window and door frame (still not complete but only one side left to go) and a thorough scrubbing of the balau deck with sugar soap followed by a sealant. House almost shiny and new, a teak colour.

Saturday morning would be a quiet time of painting, and I chose to do the last coat of white on a balcony window, with my daughter varnishing the wall underneath the deck below me. It was a small tin  of paint, and I held it comfortably in my hand, but I forgot that the carpal tunnel operations I had in the past have left me with an uncertain grip and frequent occasions of dropping things. Not three brushstrokes into the exercise and the paint pot slipped from my clumsy grasp, splattering a large Jackson Pollock across the deck and dripping the rest straight between the slats onto the house, my daughter and a concrete slab below.

Headless chicken personified. Shouting from below. Grab the paint pot to see whether water-based. Got to use turps. More headless chicken. Rush through the house and down to the garage. Grab 5l turps and run in circles looking for clean cloth. Daughter now up on deck shouting instructions. Get scrubbing brushes. Throw turps all over splatter. Find old towel. Wipe down house - first success as so smooth it's easily removed. Scrub scrub scrub - more turps. Throw water and brush it all down through the slats. More headless chicken. Coming off but need more turps. Back to garage for another 5l. Throw it on and scrub scrub scrub. Looking good now but what about downstairs?

Another towel and bring the turps, wipe down wall (just painted - will have to be redone), large pool of white paint and turps spreading over concrete. Soon ghostly footprints appear on bricks as slaves running back and forth mopping, mopping.

Why the fuss, you may ask? Wouldn't it be nice to have an arty splash across the deck? Well, He Who Can Fix Anything has a mania for spotless brickwork, etc. and no drip of varnish or paint is allowed. By great good fortune he was nowhere around during the drama, and by the time he appeared, he would have been hard pressed to notice anything on the deck, but the concrete slab gave the game away. More hours of spot cleaning ensued, happily not by me, and that is the end of my attempts at doing the fiddly bits. 

I am sticking to cooking and making tea from now on. (Sadly, time did not allow for taking of a picture of the evidence, and I probably wouldn't have known where to find my phone anyway!)