Crushing Ambitions Through House Painting

Story by Ed Robinson; Illustration by Kyle McHenry

In every man there is potential. In every man there is the possibility for greatness. For, from the moment of conception, every man is imbued with a certain spark, a certain drive to create, a certain call to look upward and marvel at the mystical and fantastic, to seek out the causes of the unknown and to make the earth his moulding. For, in every man there is a spark of the divine.

The quickest and by far the easiest way to destroy this spark, is to ask a man to paint a house. For there is no task more singularly infuriating than the painting of a house.

No challenge on earth - from the first men deciphering the conjuring of fire to the great scientists of the twentieth century dissecting the atom - is more arduous, painful, and self-deceiving than the painting of a house.

It could be wagered that some of the most destructive moments in history stemmed from a house painting gone awry. The burning of the library in Alexandria? Simply a homeowner pushed to madness. The siege of Tyre? A father of four at his poor wits end. Or the cave wars of the Modoc’s? Just a group of friends whose plan for a simple, bonding, Saturday activity had spiraled madly into uproar. House painting is a job for the mentally iron.

And, to touch on this, let’s ask some fundamental questions about wood.

Trees, you see, have played on us one of the greatest acts of revenge known to humanity. A tree in the woods can weather decades, if not centuries, of hardship and strain. A tree can survive frost, driving winds, pounding rain and the wrath of whatever other Job-esque disasters are thrown its way. Trees survived Hiroshima. Trees survive earthquakes. Some trees span lives greater than well-established countries, but cut those trees down and what happens to them? They become fragile, demanding, and intolerable. Like a wealthy old dowager, they insist they be treated, sealed, waxed, and varnished. They become insufferable.

When one starts to paint the outside of a wooden or wood paneled house, the first thing you’ll notice is the primary coat is sucked away, drained into the grain never to be seen again. The wood’s spent sixty years resisting rain, but as soon as paint touches it it’s gone. And where does it go? Where all such things go that cause middle aged men fury: the land of outdated Rand McNally’s, worn out white Nikes, snapped lawn mower cords, unwound VHS tapes, and that hat you found which you swear had nothing wrong with it, but your wife always hated and now you think she probably threw it away when you weren’t looking. Where IS that hat?

Maybe that’s why early settlers just kept the damn logs as they were. Lincoln was always going on about how he was born in a log cabin; could be that’s why he was always so calm and collected, cause he’d never had to paint the thing.

Still, on you press. Sanding, painting, sanding, painting, on and on until you finish one wall, take a step back and think, was that really the color I picked in the store? It had all been such a mass of confusion at the time as you were bombarded with walls of shade samples, thicknesses of brushes, and a jovial crowd of hardware store men to whom you could afford to show no sign you were a stranger in their land. Anyway, you sigh, let it go and realize the job you’d set aside to take six hours has already taken you five to make a quarter way.

And what’s more remarkable still is the chasmic distance between the painting of a canvas and the painting of a house. Artistic painting seems always to be received with awe, with reverence, with philosophical dissection and the curious expounding of motives and passions. What you wouldn’t give at this stage to be painting the ceiling of a chapel over the back wall of a two story and turret. Gosh that turret looks silly doesn’t it? Remember when the realtor said it would be great for a reading nook? What kind of monster reads in a nook?

Though, having thought on all of that, it seems simply a matter of ‘there but for the grace of God’.

After all, those artistic painters are only doing so out of circumstance, the opportunity availed them to study, train, and spend time in areas begging to be interpreted in oils. Do you think if, instead of lakeside sojourns and months in Parisian lofts, Seurat had been forced to spend days layering the walls of Minnesotan Dutch Colonials he’d still have had the passion? No, instead what he’d have would be a small array of miniature souvenir whiskey bottles, too paltry to really call a collection, sitting on a homemade shelf next to a ceramic bong in the shape of Santa.

I watched Bob Ross once, the calmest man in painting, try to whitewash a house. All it took was a good two hours in the sun for the Sawyer nostalgia to wear away. One hour more and he would’ve decided his most sensible course of action was to give up, burn down the house, and start again from scratch. Now how’s that for a happy accident.

Ed Robinson is a Writer and Voice

Over Actor originally from Sydney, Australia. His writing can be seen on television via The Hallmark Channel in the US, and his voice can be heard on over 250 commercials and TV Series worldwide.