Misadventures in Wallpapering

I am not normally a DIY kind of guy. The basic functions of wrenches and hammers seem clear, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you how to build a load bearing structure with them. Still, I figured I was up to the simple task of applying wallpaper. I had had no trouble stripping away the old wallpaper. The old wallpaper paper that had been on the walls was now just so much confetti piled in the corner of the room.

My first mistake was a clerical one. I ordered too much wallpaper paste: 20 gallons in two 10 gallon drums. I left one drum with my wife, who would be starting in one of the rooms upstairs. She had some experience with painting, so I knew she'd just put on a pair of headphones and be done up there in no time. As a matter of pride, I wanted to show her I could tackle the downstairs by myself.

My second mistake was letting my wife buy my coveralls. We knew this could be a messy job, so we agreed that we should get some cheap coveralls from Goodwill to work in. My wife found herself a cute pair of slim blue coveralls with a floral print on the bib. She bought me a matching pair in size XXXL. I may be taller than her, but I am nowhere near big enough around to fit this thing well. I took in the suspenders as much as I could, but they were still comically baggy. Oh well, I figured, no one's going to see me in them anyway. Thinking myself clever, I had bought a roller in addition to brushes, so that I could cover a larger surface area with paste faster. Maybe it was the paste, or maybe my technique, but this didn't work out so well. With every role, I spattered paste all over my coveralls. After catching a few drips in my mouth and one in the eye, I wiped my face clean, spit a few times and switched to a brush. I don't know anything about even strokes. I just know that more paste on a brush gets more paste on the wall faster. Having tackled every space of bare wall in reach, I moved on to the next challenge: the high spaces.

I had purchased a pair of painters stilts with the understanding that they were just like walking normally, just taller. Strapping them to my shoes was easy enough, but to get up, I had to crawl to the front door and hold on to the frame to steady myself as I rose up on the stilts. When I crossed the room again I almost ran into the far wall from the momentum of my greatly elongated stride. Bending down to the paste bucket was tricky, so I scooped up an extra heavy brush full of paste to reduce the number of the bends I had to make. Some of the paste got on my brush hand, and when I made my first up stroke, the brush slipped out of my hands and flopped down on top of my head, saturating my hair with paste and dripping a glob of it over my nose. As I fumbled the brush, I stumbled into the bucket, and went sprawling to the ground. My head was mercifully spared a concussion by virtue of landing in the confettied old red wallpaper which transformed from a neat pile into an indoor meteorological event.

I crawled out of the front door with red paper glued in polka dots on my coveralls, and a mess of wallpaper bits forming a crude red confetti wig in my hair. The glob of paste on my nose had become a small red sphere. I was so shaky getting to my feet this time, that I lost a hold of the front door and accidentally slammed it shut locking myself outside. With no keys in my pockets, and no open windows out front, I called out for my wife to come open the front door. Unfortunately, despite repetitive calls and several knocks on the front door, I could not get her attention.

Hoping that I would have better luck in the back, and wanting to avoid being seen by any neighbors at the moment, I headed around the house. Our neighbor's kid was having a birthday party next door. From up on my stilts, I could easily see over the fence into their yard where the kids were enjoying a squirt gun fight. Unfortunately, they could all see me plainly as my waist brushed the top of the fence. One word erupted from the rambunctious crowd once they had gotten a look at my red confetti nose. "Clown!" Immediately, all squirt guns were spraying me right in the face, and I had to dash along the fence like a shooting gallery target to get to my back porch.

Blinded by streams of water and still unaccustomed to the stilts, I overshot the porch and ran smack into the fence between myself and another neighbor: the Swedish woman who liked to sunbathe topless. With my waist catching at the top of the fence, my torso pitched forward, bringing my face within inches of hers. Behind her dark sunglasses, at first I only saw confusion at why a sodden clown is now hovering above her. This was quickly replaced with shock and outrage, and before I could straighten up away from her, she gave me a solid slap that left my ears ringing and cheeks burning. I stumbled back to another fence to recover. Splat! A well thrown piece of birthday cake caught me right in the face as the neighbor kids howled with laughter at my expense. Suffering another pair of hits, I did my best to maintain my dignity as I slowly took controlled steps to the back door.

Locked, but to my right eye saw an opportunity. A board was sticking out of an open window on the second floor, and with my stilts on, I might just be able to jump high enough catch hold of it and pull myself inside. Positioning myself directly beneath it, I slowly bent my legs, took a breath, and leapt straight up. With the tips of my fingers, I caught the board and gripped it hard. Unfortunately, the board simply tipped forward as it came partially out of the window, depositing everything resting on top of it on top of me. Namely, one 10 gallon drum of wallpaper paste. The open top of the drum fell right over my head as a deluge of sticky white paste coated my head, shoulders, chest, and pooled in my over-sized coveralls before draining down my legs. Taking one hand off of the board, I lifted the bucket off of my head in time to see my wife rushed to the window as she removed her blaring headphones. It took her a few seconds to figure out what had happened, but then she started to laugh at me.

Days later, she still hasn't stopped laughing at me.