Why My Office Still Isn't Clean

With a nice shiny new book deal, it seemed a good idea to clean my office and rearrange the furniture. A perfect time for a new start. Logical, right?

I begin moving furniture, doing rudimentary cleaning as I go. Once I've moved the furniture away from the walls, it seems stupid not to paint - this room had been needing repainting for a while. So I pull out my spackle and favorite spackle blade and sander, and carefully fill holes and sand uneven areas, working early and late because it's been horribly hot during midday, and in Vermont you don't have air conditioning for the one or two hot weeks a year.

I locate a can of ceiling paint plus the paint I'd bought for this room a couple of years back and shake and stir them, and then carefully paint the ceiling edging (the ceiling itself can wait, I decide - I do hate painting ceilings) and then paint all the trim with the new paint, along the ceiling and windows and floor. Then out comes the roller: I can't paint the entire room at once because of all the furniture and file boxes I'm working around, but get half of it done, and do the second coat the next day.

Then I move to the half of the wall adjacent to the closet, where the desk and hutch used to reside. I scrape lightly - and the old paint starts coming off, in jagged hunks and then finally in small bits, down to the chalky white builders paint the previous owners had used for some unknown, inane reason. This, I discover, comes off completely with hard wiping, but sends rivulets of melted chalky white paint running down the arms and onto the floor and clothing.

I find a straight edge and carefully cut a line in the already re-painted area, straight down from the windowsill, and peel the paint only to that line, hoping the edge won't show too much, thinking that this corner area, previously behind the desk, had simply been damper in this extraordinarily wet Vermont summer.

Then I discover that the louvered closet doors and the closet door frame have a dusting of mold. To which I have a mild allergy. Clearly I cannot wipe it adequately from the door slats - the doors must come off to be washed. I try; they are set too snugly. I work on the screw on the thingy that keeps them in their track, but it is too tight to budge. Now I am hot, frustrated, and covered in melted old paint and with a snootful of mold. I consider crying.

Then I remember the power drill SO gave me one Christmas, which happens to have the right Phillips bit in place. Out come the screws, zip. Ah. Every woman should have a power drill. After some maneuvering, off come the stiff doors, and I wrangle them into the shower to scrub them , then wipe down the closet frame. Then I realize all the clothes stored within are vaguely musty and moldy smelling - and all must be washed. Three washer loads worth.

The next day I finish the touch-up brush work on the large area that has two coats of new paint, planning to move my desk there and start working in my office tomorrow. I notice an uneven area, some old blobs of paint near the heat register. Out comes my electric sander. Bzzzz. Off come the blobs.

But now the nice new paint is coming away from the wall. I tug tentatively, and it pulls off in giant hunks, entire huge stretchy pieces, like removing an enormous plasticine scab. I take a deep breath and continue tugging and it comes off, all of it, the entire wall and a half I have painstakingly spackled and sanded and painted with the lovely new paint, all the way up to the perfect line I've painted next to the ceiling. The previous paint comes, too, and I'm down to the chalky white builders paint. As there is decent, albeit ugly, paint underneath, I sand the heck out of the chalky white stuff, sending white powder over everything in the room, myself included, and curse the previous owners who applied this horrible cheap paint. When I glimpse myself in the bathroom mirror, it's like looking into the future and seeing myself as an old woman with wild white hair. It isn't pretty.

So now I have an office with melted white paint on one side of the floor, giant strips and squares of peeled-off paint on the other side, and white dust over everything.

I realize I am not going to have my nice clean office any time soon.

So I quietly close the office door, metaphorically and literally, and the next day begin my novel revisions propped up in bed, upstairs.

Note: I've purchased some primer and now plan to sand the chalky white paint, wipe it thoroughly, scrape the few remaining bits of top paint still adhering, prime it all, and try once again to paint it, this time after moving much of the furniture out. But not until next week or so.