Well, if the economy truly tanks, I can go into business painting toilets. Or perhaps "commodes" would be the more commodious word, for the marketing copy. I have spent the last three days, you see, touching up the toilet in our downstairs bathroom. Finances precludes replacing said toilet, which matches the tub and double sinks, all of which are a hideous robin's egg blue that is brighter than any robin would dare.
A peculiar blue, it's a saturated muddle of turquoise and cornflower. We've painted everything else bone or white to tone down the room; the previous owners had Victorian wallpaper wi a specks of the aforementioned blue pollinating brown and magenta flora. They were, I suppose, doing their best. It was their previous owners who chose this custom color. I reconciled myself to it only by finding photographic prints of Santorini, Greece, in which the blue shows up in the domed roofs of whitewashed plaster churches.
The prints were cheaper than new fixtures.
And now, I am painting the chips and scrapes and a hairline crack at the base. I carefully mix cerulean blue, white and black ceramic paint and dab away with a brush I intend to discard immediately, pretending all the while that I am not painting a toilet. My husband asks eagerly, every evening and every morning, if he can use the downstairs bathroom again. Every evening and every morning, I tell him no. I've had to re-mix. I missed a spot. I gave it a second coat to be sure. It wasn't easy getting that color right, and my project has taken on, in my own eyes, a Sistine significance.
Finally I finish. Rise on creaky knees, smile, and pronounce my work undetectable. This is, I am now willing to admit, far more satisfying than agonizing over an expensive purchase.
Nothing like getting your hands dirty.
Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer
