We bought our first house, a 3-bedroom ranch in the Berkley subdivision. It wasn’t anything special, but it was ours. About 2 years after we moved in, we decided it was time to paint the house. It had been white with black shutters, but we decided that it would look much better if it was a cream color with red shutters. Since it was my house, I decided I would paint it, which was a questionable decision.
My previous experience with painting was with watercolors in kindergarten, but I was not to be denied. I went to the hardware store and picked up 5 gallons of cream-colored paint, a pint of red for the shutters and borrowed a ladder from our neighbor.
It was a long ladder and came in three sections. Fully extended it would almost span the James River in Scottsville. It was a really long ladder.
I pried open the first bucket of paint and went to work – inside the carport. No problem there, I didn’t even need a ladder and I managed to get a good bit of paint on the house and only a small amount on my person and the driveway. The front of the house was a little trickier with some nasty hedges in the way, but I squeezed in and got the job done. And actually, I didn’t mind that we now had the only cream-colored hedges in the neighborhood.
The end of the house presented something of a problem. It was maybe 30 feet high from the ground to the rooftop, so the very long ladder would finally come into play. I began my ascension – first rung, second, third rung, until I was now perched about 12 rungs high. My biggest worry was that if I propped the very long ladder too close to the house, it and myself might tumble over backwards and crash to the ground in my neighbor’s yard and that would not be a good thing. So, to be extra safe, I moved the bottom of the ladder way out from the house, adding a little distance with each new rung. The bottom of the ladder was now about 15 feet from the house, and I was at the very top, dabbing the last bit of paint when I stretched a bit, and the bottom of the ladder gave way, shooting backwards while I did a bump-bump-bump-bump-bump tumble down the side of the house and the paint can followed and landed – no lie – right on my head.
Nancy heard the commotion and came running out to see what horrors lay before her. She found me with the paint can on my head sitting dazed, not hurt, but clearly shaken.
After that experience I hung up my paint brush, retired from the painting business and returned the now cream colored and very long ladder to my neighbor.
Since then, if something needs painting, I call a painter. And from now on, I’m sticking to watercolors.
