By Dave Ellis
The first home my wife and I bought was built around the time I was born, so like me, it was in pretty bad shape. Bad plumbing, bug infestation and general dampness…and the house had these problems too! I felt a kinship. My wife likes fixer-uppers (Hello! Me again!) and she dug right in. I would come home from work and find various pieces of the house out for the trash. One day it was an old bar with Naugahyde padding, another time it was the ugly wallpaper and linoleum. But the next project was the worst, the popcorn texture ceiling.

For those of you not familiar with 1970s architecture, I will give you a primer. The 70s were a confusing time for all of us. Strange colors and fabrics that were only meant for furniture were worn on the body with great pride (like Naugahyde!). Designers also dabbled in strange materials, like vermiculite or polystyrene, also known as popcorn texture. These space age substances were widely admired for their ability to both collect spiderwebs and crumble. Plus, if you have a water leak there’s no way to make it look even again so you pretty much have to redo the entire ceiling. Worst of all it doesn’t even taste like popcorn. That’s false advertising.

I really didn’t want to mess with the ceiling but my wife insisted. “Let’s redo the ceiling, it will be funny and maybe one day you will be writing for a magazine and this can be a topic.” I hate it when she’s right. First off, those home improvement shows on TV make everything looks so simple and quick. It was actually prolonged and exhausting, and that was just the part where I was whining about having to do the work!

Once we got started it wasn’t that bad, but it was messy. First you spray the ceiling with a hose (Hear that kids? Spraying the ceiling with a hose helps mommy and daddy!), let it soak in for a minute, then scrape the sludge off like it’s an ex-girlfriend. I was actually improving my home without Ty Pennington yelling at me through a bullhorn! All said and done the scraping took an hour, not too bad to be left with a…blank, ugly ceiling.
So, now all we had to do was to patch the holes, re-texture (popcorn free!) base coat and final coat. As easy as 1-2-3…4-5-6-7…ugh.

The last step is the kicker, I hate painting. I don’t like any brush movements that don’t involve karate lessons. (Thanks Mr. Miyagi!) But the real reason I hate painting is that it is never finished. You roll the paint on and the wall sucks it up. The paint is never the real color because the wall keeps sucking it up! The ceiling is reverse, it actually shows colors real well, but only if the color is an accidental nudge from painting the wall. And don’t even get me started on wall paper, that stuff is whack. I have a hard enough time getting stamps straight on an envelope and now I’m expected line up a huge strip of gluey paper straight on the wall?

I wrote all of this because my dear wife now paints when I’m gone. She doesn’t expect me to help, just like I don’t expect her change the oil. Well, I don’t change it either, but I take the car to the shop and that’s a lot of work. As long as we keep each other comfortable with our uncomfortabilities I think this marriage will work out just fine. Plus she has never thrown out my Naugahyde evening robe.