Lessons in home improvement, or "Why my cat is still mad at me"

When we first moved into our little townhouse 6 years ago, the woman who had owned it previously made a lot of Sell It changes. Your typical things - new, inexpensive beige carpet in the downstairs, fresh coat of eggshell paint on the 1st floor walls, new window treatments, a few fancy geegaws hanging around (read - fake flowers on funny wall pedestals). Well, we probably would have bought the house anyway, but it was nice to have it look so fresh and clean in the part people would see when they visited.

The upstairs, however, was a different story. It was painfully obvious after the previous owner's furniture was gone that the upstairs walls desperately needed repainting. Since we'd been living in bland beige carpet white wall apartments for nearly 9 years we decided if we had to paint anyway we were going to use some color for crying out loud! I admit, I went a little crazy. We ended up painting our son's room bright robin's egg blue, our daughter's room bright sunshine yellow, and our room deep dusty rose. And - since the lady before us had lazily painted around a big hutch or something in the dining room, and badly repainted the kitchen (French purplish blue) we did those too. Pale pink for the dining room, light blue for the kitchen - to match the (grrr) Contact paper she slapped up there (we will tackle that issue at a much later date).

Overkill perhaps, but we loved it - it became our House of Many Colors.

Well....come to find out the downstairs re-paint job was done with flat paint. Ever lived with 3 young children in a house with flat white paint? Yeah, it looks as bad as you'd imagine. Dark smudges and fingerprints around every light switch, railing, door jamb, you name it. So - this would be the summer we finally tackled the living room and the stairwell. Here's what I've learned....

1. Any home improvement project undertaken with young children in the house must, of necessity, be a tag-team effort. And honestly, I think my husband got the better end of the deal in many respects. He did most of the painting, true (since he's tall and better with a paint roller than I am) but I got to do most of the clearing out and storing of Stuff, chasing children, fixing meals, and the Keeping of Small Animals and Children Out of the Paint.

2. Cats are generally smarter than children when it comes to wet paint. They sniff it once, decide it's not Food or Prey, and avoid it. The one exception? His Majesty's Favorite Windowsill. Simba ended up in the basement while that was being done. He's only had one bath since he's been with us and that was enough for both of us till the end of time.

3. Repainting a room removes all of your cat's scent from it, evidently. Simba kept walking warily around the perimeter of the living room, sniffing the walls and looking extremely confused. He would fix us with this contemptuous stare as he did it, as if to say, how dare you disturb my domain? He must have spent the whole night re-claiming his territory because he was much calmer the next morning.

4. You think elephants have good memories? Cats never forget either. Now every time we move a piece of furniture, get out the vacuum, or start cleaning up - the cat high-tails it (literally) out of the room for safer ground. Even though we've been done painting for a week now.

So now we have a lovely spring green living room and a beautiful pale peach stairwell and hallway. Only one problem - now that the downstairs looks so nice, that master bedroom is looking awfully shabby. Maybe later, when our brains have recovered from the paint fumes....

A quick teaser...

So many ideas, so little time...

Since school ended we've

1. Gone up to PA for a quick visit-everyone-before-they-scatter family trip.
2. Repainted the living room, stairwell, and upstairs hallway.
3. Begun class for Brian and Chris

Which is why you haven't seen much here the last few weeks as I've desperately ping-ponged between frantic amounts of overwork and exhausted recovery.

So....before sleep finally catches me I'll leave you with a teaser. In the next couple posts I'll tell you about:

1. Lessons learned from home improvement (sequel...why my cat is still mad at me)
2. The hidden music.
3. Summertime kid antics (or, why every mom needs the ability to apparate)

Of course, you may need to remind me - the mind isn't what it used to be (especially after all those paint fumes!)