Latex Therapy

The medicine cabinet in our master bathroom was gnarly. Yeah, read that again. I said it. Gnarly.

The paint was peeling and yellowed, brown smears of unknown origin dotted one shelf. And, someone had seen fit to sprinkle what looked like boric acid here and there. I haven't seen a roach in this house. I hope they were just trying to get rid of ants. I can deal with an ant crawling over my toothbrush. A little hot water and soap, and OK, I'm fine. But a roach? If I see that? I'm afraid you're going to have to take me out of here on a stretcher.

So, we shared our daughter's medicine cabinet, which is huge and has sparkly glass shelves that are easy for me to keep clean.

But once the old shower (a.k.a. green phone booth of moldy death) had been demolished, and a new bath with new tile were in place, I'd run out of excuses. The medicine cabinet had to be cleaned for the master bath to be finished.

Yuck!

I probably did one restorative task a week in that cabinet. My stomach couldn't take much more. One week I sponged it, and another I scrubbed, then I scraped. Sponged again.

Somewhere in there, I'd gone to the hardware store and bought primer and paint. I don't know anything about primer. Some 17-year-old behind the counter told me I must have it if I was painting a medicine cabinet. I was more amazed than I probably should have been at his vast knowledge of primer and all things paint. It was probably just that he was so refreshing, not some disaffected kid just earning a few dollars, but one who took his job and his customers seriously. I was embarrassed but he was patient as I took forever to choose a paint color I thought would match the bath's existing trim. I settled on artists' white, probably more for the name, since I fancy myself one. As he deftly added the correct tint and mixed it with his complicated contraption, I thought of my husband's students and wanted to ask him where he went to school, and what his goals were for the future. But then he might think I'm a stalker, so I kept my mouth shut.

The two cans sat there looking at me for a week.

Finally, my husband uttered something about us needing to break down and finally paint the house. As he started sanding, I knew where I was going to start.

I set up our bedroom TV, a wide-screen my husband bought a few years back, but which has been stifled behind a plastic tarp during the bathroom remodel. I angled it towards the bathroom so I could watch it as I painted. I put on HGTV, of course, for cheesy inspiration. They were having a catfight on Design Star, a show I have avoided. But my focus was the cabinet so I bore it.

I didn't expect painting that disgusting cabinet to be so relaxing. Some friends had visited the previous weekend, and told us how a co-worker of mine had painted her house and it was "therapeutic." I snickered under my breath. But, as I waved my brush over the cabinet in the method described on the can--make a W, wipe across it horizontally, and finish with vertical strokes--I fell into the uniformity and cleanliness of it. The medicine cabinet looked better, and I did it. Over the past month I'd left this house, that didn't feel quite mine yet, in the hands of trampling strangers, and here I was, doing my thing to improve it for once. I inhaled deeply, and rested in the tranquility that accompanies empowerment.

And, more significantly, I was using a part of my brain that often lays dormant, the part that moves my brush across a canvas and leaves color and emotion in its wake. I just so happened to find my sabbatical report from 2001 yesterday, and that girl, the one who painted canvasses so freely was there. She'd also peeked out in front of that medicine cabinet. I saw her when I closed the door and wiped the paint off the edges of the mirror. She smiled back at me, and said she'd never left.

The paint color I chose matched the trim perfectly, which added to my satisfaction. When I was taking a class at an art school several years ago, my instructor told me that I have a high visual IQ. I'm not a prideful person, but I took pride in that. I can measure something in Adobe Illustrator, and know it's a perfect inch without using its ruler. I can make dozens of logos in an hour. I've got it. I've just got to use it. God gave it to me for a reason.

My husband and I share an office--he has his computer and genealogy items in a closet, and figures that's all the space he needs. He found a very cool desk over Craig's List and he's happy. The whole rest of the office is for my artistic endeavoring but everything is still out in the garage. I am making a date with my hunky hubby this weekend to carry in the storage cabinets and tables, and then I'll get them decked out with my paints, crafts and fabrics again.

Well, after I paint the room. I've never painted a whole room before, so I don't know what is going to happen. But, I'm ready for the challenge--having saved that cabinet from its pasty misery, I'm feeling like I can paint anything.