Hot Lead and Cold Showers

These are a few of the things you learn when your house is being painted.

• Cold Showers. Our water heater has a timer that makes the water nice and hot about 5 minutes before we get up in the morning. But when the painters pressure-washed the house, they tripped the circuit breaker on the water heater. By the time I reset it the clock was off by a few hours, and all the scaffolding makes it impossible to reach the timer to adjust it. So for the last two months it's taken a lot longer to get hot water in the morning. #FirstWorldProblems, I know.
• The Tissue Inversion Principle. We leave the doors unlocked so the painters can come inside and open windows, paint trim, use the bathroom, or whatever. Regarding the bathroom, we hang the toilet paper the correct way (i.e., unrolling from the bottom). But after the first day or so, we noticed that the toiler paper was flipped around to unroll from the top. I figured Kathy must have done it, and she thought I had changed it. A few days later we put on a new roll and the same thing happens: it flips over partway through the day. Evidently one of the painters has strong ideas about which way the toilet paper should work, so we've just decided to leave it alone. Starting next week, though, we're changing it back to the proper way.
• Idle Heaters. The windows (and doors) have been open almost nonstop for eight weeks now, so there's no point trying to heat the house. Fortunately, it's been warm throughout the project so we haven't gotten too cold. Who knows? Maybe we've even saved a few bucks on heating bills.
• Housekeeping Tip. If you pull the ice cube tray out of your freezer (to fill an ice chest or cooler, for instance) be sure to put it back right away. Otherwise your entire freezer fills with ice cubes.
• Fractal Surfaces. You never know how big something is until you try to paint it. Want to paint a wall? No problem. But if it's shingled, it'll take three times as long. You've got to paint each little shingle, plus the edges, sides, and a little bit underneath each one. A big easy roller job becomes a tedious little brush job.