
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 3, 1990                   TAG: 9006040345
SECTION: HOMES                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Sandra Brown Kelly
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SORTING JUNK IS HARD PART OF PAINTING

Deciding to paint the interior of your house is simple enough. You determine who will do the job and what color you want. The hard part is trying to figure why you kept the junk that you will have to move before painting begins.

On the shelves of my living room bookcase, I found receipts for two years of Christmas gifts. In the cabinet of that same bookcase, still in the Woolworth's bag, were the Christmas calendar towels I intended using as stocking stuffers. I couldn't find them at Christmas.

I yearn for simplicity in life, but I can't shake the urge to tuck something away. That pack rat habit has left me with such things as:

A decade of National Geographic magazines;

My high-school cheerleading sweater - good only as proof that wool lasts forever;

Every negative of every photograph taken by any family member the past 30 years - all dumped into shoe boxes;

Strange little pieces of hardware that don't suggest by their form what they are to be used for - enough to fill two kitchen drawers;

Two broken Christmas tree ornaments - a bear in a stocking missing most of his head and a teensy manger scene in which all people and animals have come unglued.

In addition to the problem of sorting and throwing out some of the clutter you keep for whatever reason, painting has a second hazard.

When the walls are dingy and the woodwork full of fingerprints and gouges made by furniture, bikes and whatever, you can overlook all the shortcomings. Put a new coat of paint on just one small area and the rest of the place looks like condemnation time.

You discover that the sheer curtains are not really a soft white; they are full of soot and dust. The wallpaper that was white with flecks of gold is really gray, and some of the flecks aren't original.

Even the electrical outlet coverplates look outdated.

Then comes the real trauma of picking out new wallpaper for the foyer, flooring for the kitchen and a window shade for the den.

There are millions of wallpaper patterns and about as many places that sell them. Flooring ranges from $8 a square yard to $47 in the same store display, plus you learn you can't take up the old floor unless it's done by a special asbestos abatement-trained worker at a cost that will shock.

And the ways to dress a window exceed imagination.

It's an experience, though, and it teaches. Before I paint again, I will move first.

by CNB