Friends Don't Let Friends Texture

Let me start by saying I have really great parents whom I love and adore. They are really great grandparents to Andrew and have done a lot for me and Adam. So, when they need something done, I am more than willing to help out. (In English class, this would be called foreshadowing).

My parents are in the process of remodeling their 2 bathrooms and are doing some of the work themselves. (If you didn't just say "Oh shit" you should have...see foreshadowing.) A couple of weeks ago, Dad asked me to help with painting the bathrooms and I, who love to paint rooms, said yes. I can honestly say that I didn't exactly understand what I was signing up for.

My parents house is close to 50 years old (it is the house they owned when I was born and, no, I am not 50). The bathrooms have always been wallpapered, back in the 70's it was this god-awful gold and white wall paper and more recently a subdued tan with some hints of blue. My father had peeled off this wallpaper to reveal bare sheetrock.

My cousin Scott, who has done a little remodeling himself, told my father that the walls would need to be textured. I have never thought of Scott as a mean person, but, clearly he has a sadistic streak.

After visiting with the guys at Home Depot, we settled for the bucket of goop that provided a smooth texture finish. The guy at Home Depot assured us this was much easier than working with the goop that left a heavier texture. According to him, you just slap it on the wall with a trowel and spread it out. No problem.

So this morning, I go over to my parents house at 6:30 and, after breakfast, we begin work. There is normally a large mirror in the bathroom so we decide to start on the wall that will be covered by the mirror. I take our trowel, slap some goop on the wall and begin to spread. It looks horrible. I mean truly awful. So I decide to read the directions on the bucket of goop. It says we should be using a loop roller to apply the goop. So we trek back to home depot, buy some more stuff, get injured in the process, and try again. The loop roller looks even worse than the trowel. By this time, Mom has wisely retreated to another part of the house where she will remain for most of the day.

Dad and I discuss our options:
a) Continue with the goop we have and hope we figure it out.
b) Don't texture the wall and just paint it.
c) Hire a contractor to do it.

Despite my very vocal support, Option C is tossed out pretty quickly. The guys at Home Depot and the aforementioned cousin Scott made it clear that we can't just paint the sheetrock (and the sheetrock is in pretty bad shape I should include), so Option B is out. That leaves only Option A. We were going to have to texture the damn thing.

So, I take a paint brush and begin slapping goop up on the wall and Dad starts spreading it with the trowel. It was not pretty. To quote A Christmas Story, "In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan." I should say that Dad was not the only one cursing. It is a good thing Andrew was not around or he would have a whole bunch of new words to repeat.

By the time we finished today, at 2:00 pm, our technique had improved considerably. I wouldn't say it looked great, but it looks better than it did when we started (not that it could have gotten much worse). I just hope we can hide some of the flaws with paint. And both of us agreed, we hate texturing walls and never want to do it again.

Did I mention that we still have one bathroom to do?