Blue Bath

(Handyman's wife Cybele checks in for a posting...)

Some time ago I went through a faux finishing phase. I stripped and refinished a dresser, painted the frames of several mirrors, and redid a tabletop using paint and powdered graphite. Jocasta Innes’s Paint Magic  and Mindy Druker’s Recipes for Surfaces were my Old and New Testament. I didn’t have much money, but I had plenty of time to layer on gesso and experiment with oil paints, glazes, and toxic fumes.

Fast forward 15 or so years. Now with a bit more money—but never enough—and much less time, James called on me to help out with painting our new old house. Priming and painting walls was different than painting furniture, but I did a decent enough job, right honey?

Must be, because he also tapped me to paint our cast iron bath tub. Now, putting in the bath tub in our upstairs bathroom is key. Our son has just about had it with showers, and I like to soak in the tub every one in a while myself. But I stalled. I delayed. I dragged my feet. I don’t even have James’s excuse of having other renovation tasks to tackle. Nope, I was just being lazy.

In the late summer, we finally trooped to the hardware store and picked out a paint with the simple and unlikely (for a paint color) name, “Blue.” James handed me the wire brush, sandpaper, a dust mask, and a drop cloth and pushed me upstairs. Once I got going, I enjoyed myself. Two coats of primer—three in a particularly rusty area—two coats of paint and many hours of drying time later I was done. Mission accomplished!

But like our current administration, I was not really done. “Uh, Cybele, weren’t we planning on painting the legs and pipes white?” Oh yeah, I’ll get right on that. . . .