My dad is an electrical engineer. He did a lot of home repairs when I was growing up. A lot. He used to take us kids along on occasional trips to the hardware store — endless, meandering, tooth-grindingly boring trips to the hardware store. That man could wander the nail aisle for 20 minutes and never glance up. Duct work? Wiring? They took his complete attention. I went through puberty between the lumber and sandpaper aisles that summer he built the family room cabinets.
So I am more reluctant than most women to cruise the hardware store. When forced there by household necessity, I go straight to the customer service desk and ask for an escort — preferably a middle-aged guy with a gut and a square pencil behind his ear.
I was nevertheless reluctantly intrigued by the Home Depot’s how-to clinics. So on a rainy Sunday afternoon I found myself sitting in the staff training room with three troop leaders and five bored Girl Scouts, for “Fun with Faux Painting.” They were working on a household competency badge; this was their version of refinishing furniture. “We have some discretion in defining the activities,” one leader told me.
The clinic teacher — a twentysomething woman in that iconic orange apron — started with colorwashing (brush, not rag). Four parts glaze to one part paint; choose colors three to six shades apart for good contrast.
“Hey Mom,” the scout beside me called across the table. “I want to paint my room red and black.” This didn’t surprise me, since the scout’s nail polish was black, her hair was black, and her eye makeup leaned heavily toward… black. It didn’t seem to surprise her mom, either, who concentrated on the colorwashing with the intensity of my own dad comparing drill bits. This mom recently painted her basement stairway blue and peach, with a split roller and a side-by-side paint pan. She painted her daughter’s room three years ago (periwinkle and moss green with dark purple accents). The four-poster bed with black drapes, apparently, clashed.
The teacher showed us sponging. Moist sponge, tinted glaze; if you mess up, just repaint the section and start over.
“Hey Mom,” the scout interrupted. “We could paint it red and then sponge over in black.”
The teacher showed us ragging, answered a question about Venetian plaster, skipped frottage (put plastic wrap on wet paint to simulate the look of antique leather). The scouts passed notes and checked their cell phones. They volunteered to help the Black Scout paint her room. At last, her mom sighed and asked the teacher, “How many coats of primer does it take to cover red and black? If a person wanted to, you know, paint a room after someone went off to college.”
“My parents bought a house with a polka-dotted playroom and a banana-yellow bathroom,” the teacher replied, openly sympathetic. “It took my dad six coats of primer to cover the polka dots, but only two coats for the bathroom.”
“I’m going to live at home for college,” the scout interjected.
I was engrossed in this parental tug-of-war. Did we whine like this when Dad took us shopping? Is that how my brothers got him to paint a racing stripe across their bedroom ceiling in the mid-70s?
There’s an inverse proportion to parenthood: The harder you’re concentrating on something else, the faster your kids can wear you down. My dad would say yes to pretty much anything when he had his head in the dishwasher. If chicks and tools are a tough combination, kids and tools are impossible.
Maybe that’s the appeal of a clinic: Moms get the time and space to concentrate on a project without someone there begging for candy for dinner. We, too, can conquer the toolbox if we get to ignore the kids.
Inspired, I wandered the store until I found the woodworking tools. I bought a plane. I figured some night, when the kids are asleep, I’ll get that one crooked bookshelf to seat evenly. Now that would be a badge of honor.
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