Dear Sweet Lord Jesus, don't let me kill this child

I prayed as I got a good look at the house when I got home. The color is right. The boy I hired to paint doesn't have the sense God gave a billygoat. From the road, it looked OK. When I got up close, it looked as if the house had mange. I painted the front and one side with 4 gallons of paint. He painted the front and two sides with a gallon and a half. It was put on so thin you could read the newspaper through it. The Barney Purple shone triumphantly through. There was probably more paint in the mess around the house than there was on it. The boy, up to his elbows, the brushes, the bucket, the roller pan, two rollers, and the two clean-up rags were saturated.

Trying not to yell at him, I just basically asked him what he was thinking? I got no good answer to that, besides the fact that he had planned to "touch up" some spots, and that he had never painted cinderblocks before. The whole fucking thing needed touching up. I guess the most amazing thing to me was the he was acting like this was perfectly normal - as if he couldn't tell it looked like total shit. When he asked if he should come back tomorrow, I told him yes, I thought he should, since the job wasn't done.

I went through a little painting 101 with him, and showed him how to load his brush. I showed him how to paint so that it went into the rough surface. I painted a test patch on one of the doors to under the house, and explained that tomorrow he could compare what he had done to the door I painted. If it didn't look the same, I explained, that meant it wasn't covered yet. I told him to lay the paint on thickly, as if he was being paid on how much of it he used. Then I told him to clean up the brushes and leave.

As he left, I asked him where the house key was. I had left him a key, trying to be good to him, so he could get in the house and get a soda or use the bathroom. He had lost the key. In the four fucking hours he was there. I think he sensed imminent physical danger. He took off pretty quickly.

I then went around the house, cleaned up the mess he had left, cleaned the brushes and roller pan properly, and put them on the porch for tomorrow.

After that, I changed and went to the store to buy more paint rollers.

It never crossed my mind that even the most inexperienced painter could fuck this up. It took me about 3 hours to do the front door (including taking it down, removing the locks, and sanding it down), the front and one side, cut it all in, and clean up. With the base coat on there to keep the paint from soaking so much into the blocks, it should have been easy to do the job in 4 hours. These are just flat fucking walls for crying out loud! And this boy is going to spend two days doing it. Hopefully. If he comes back tomorrow. I guess that the reason I was so upset was that none of it was done correctly. Rather than call and ask, or go back over one area until it was right, he just fucked the whole job up.

The idea for paying to have this done was so that I wouldn't have to worry about it, and to have extra time. I spent an hour painting and cleaning up when I got home last night, and felt like and asshole for being upset about the kid doing a half-ass job. Not to mention being out the $100 I'm paying him to do it in the first place. Plus I about had a heart-attack when I got home.

Needless to say, I was in a pretty black mood afterwards. I ate some supper, watched the Daily Show, and turned in early. Even Family Guy re-runs didn't make me feel much better.

No word at all from Jeremiah.