divine angst

We took some video of our new apartment yesterday, since it’s still empty and (most of) the repairs have been done. (Our landlord has been great, filling in all the holes, recaulking the bathtub, defrosting the refrigerator, etc., so we’re not really all that irked that it’s taking a few extra days.)

One thing we noticed while filming and walking around in the early evening light is that the walls are really filthy. They’re dirtiest around the vents, which makes sense, but they’re also gross behind where the former tenants had their couch, and, for some odd reason, above the faux fireplace. The wall above the faux fireplace, in fact, looks like it was at one time even DIRTIER, and someone took to it with cleanser and sort of moved the dirt all around. There are definite scrub streaks.

So this week, I think our goal will be to clean the walls and the….dum ta da dum!…PAINT.

I’ve actually never painted an apartment. I’ve painted interiors before, but only in my own home and only when the floors weren’t installed. We renovated my childhood home when I was in high school, and I painted most of the living areas. But since the floor wasn’t down, it wasn’t a big deal when I spilled an entire gallon can of paint all over the place. We just wiped it up, let it dry, and carpeted over it later.

Unfortunately, in the 12 or so years since that happy time, I haven’t really gotten more coordinated. So I have some concerns about painting. Also, our new apartment has really high ceilings, so I think we’ll have some problems with that, too. Our landlord has a ladder which I believe is kept in the basement, so we’ll use that if we have to, but if for some reason he keeps it elsewhere, we may end up using a stepstool–or buying our own ladder, heaven forbid.

So I’m excited about the idea of painting, but am sort of dreading the actual process. I don’t know why, either. We have plenty of time–the movers won’t be moving our furniture for almost two weeks. Even though we’ll be living there in about a week (sleeping on an IKEA futon-bed we’re going to buy this weekend), we won’t have any STUFF in the place. So painting will actually be sort of easy–no need to get big dropcloths or move furniture around. But I’m still nervous about it all. Maybe part of that is because I have NO IDEA what color we’ll be using. I’m not even going to try to match the white on the baseboards and windows (and I am NOT painting those things), so we’ll have to do a color of some kind. But do we do ONE color or more than one? Do we do accent walls?

I guess at some point over the next several days, I’ll need to go by Home Depot or something and figure out the answers to those questions. And if I can’t buy paint before then, at least I can clean walls. And probably pick up some primer, since there are so many patches on the walls that I’m afraid to paint without priming.

Does anyone have any advice for me before we take on this task?