On Saturday night when we went back to the house it was mostly vacant. We had to order our paint for the painters, even though we hadn’t truly gotten to sample the paint colors. When I say “truly”, I mean I got to slap them on the walls at 6 pm that night when each of the bedrooms and living room were dark, forgetting that all the light switches powered outlets, not light fixtures. They looked ok wet by the light of our phones and there wasn’t much more we could do. My amazing KISA had found a coupon for $5 off each Benjamin Moore gallon, so I took the liberty of ordering them all online that night for pickup Sunday morning. I found that it allowed the discount for only up to five gallons, so I placed multiple orders to the local hardware store. When you’re buying 15+ gallons of paint, every dollar counts.

We got up early Sunday morning and I called the local hardware store shortly after they opened to get a timeline. Of course they didn’t have the right base for the master bedroom color I’d picked out, but were helpful at calling their other stores upon my persistent suggestion to see if they stocked the base. Luckily there was one on the way to Oakland that we could swing into. When I was told our paint would be ready I swung in to the hardware store with my KISA waiting in the car while it rained. I spent the next 45 minutes waiting for the clerk to figure out how to ring up my orders because the dollar amount didn’t match how it was ringing up. I really tried to be patient, in hopes the karma would pay off in the day ahead. Thankfully at the other location, with our master bedroom paint, I was literally able to swing in and swing out. They didn’t seem concerned about the price not matching and let me go on my way.

By the time we made it to the house neither my KISA nor I were in an especially happy mood given the crappy weather and the extended time it took to start our day. I realized I was going to have to sacrifice the Packers game that afternoon to get done what we needed to do. The seller stopped by to continue loading her belongings, so I tried to ignore her and go about my day. My day was going to consist of pulling all the nails and screws out of the walls and washing down the walls. My husband’s day was consisting

80’s intercom we decided to remove

of doing other cleaning and inspecting the 80’s intercom system that was in every single room to figure out how to remove it. I went about my business, realizing how disgusting a person’s place could be. I know my KISA thought I was just being anal with the walls until I showed him what I was washing off. It was everything from smoke residue from all the incense burning to food remnants on the walls to filth from the knees and below from the dogs. I was fearful that with the ridiculously low price we were paying the painters that they wouldn’t spend any time washing the walls and would rather just paint over the lumpiness.

Removing the curtain rods. If you look closely you can see a soot-outlined cross above the fireplace.

While I was going about my business my KISA made a couple of trips to Home Depot. During his time he bought all the products to not only patch the intercom system holes, but to also put a knock-down texturizer over the top to make it look like the texture on the rest of our walls. He’d also made a return trip at my request to buy an electrical tester so that my child wouldn’t be born without a father.

By the time he returned from his second trip, not yet started on his project, I was five hours into scrubbing the walls and removing wall hangings and had finally made it upstairs. Upon working upstairs I realized that the disgust of the walls was only getting worse, not better. And, that the seller burned all the incense and removed the carpeting on the steps and in the master because her four housedogs peed everywhere. And, since the carpeting had been removed, that now meant they’d also peed all over the subfloors. Being 22 weeks pregnant at the time my sense of smell was rather acute and I didn’t know what we were going to do once we moved in. So, my hormones took over and I started crying. My poor KISA came leaping

The disgusting master with pee-stained subfloors.

upstairs, wondering what was going on and if the baby was ok. Between sobs I explained to him how dirty the house was, how tired I was, and how awful the smell was. We had also run out of daylight again and I didn’t feel like the house was ready for the painters to come. My KISA grabbed the washcloth from me and did a quick scrub job of the three bedrooms that weren’t Sarah-quality, but I was too exhausted to care. We had dinner plans with our newly engaged friends that night and someone coming to our apartment to buy our old mattress, so we had no choice but to leave the house and call good-enough good enough.

In case you’re interested, here are the paint colors we picked:

• Dining Room: Louisburg Green
• Living Room: Sandy Hook Gray
• Downstairs Bathroom, Downstairs Hallway, Laundry Room, Upstairs Hallway, and Upstairs Bathroom: Elmira White
• Master Bedroom: Yarmouth Blue
• Spare Bedroom: Van Courtland Blue
• Nursery: Hollingsworth Green
• Trim, Ceilings, and Closets: Simply White