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Tuesday Sep 08, 2009

The Importance Of A Football-Neutral Colour Scheme

In my day-to-day shenanigans, it never ceases to amaze me how even the smallest task can magically expand (no need to add water) into a stonking great mission that ends up taking triple the amount of time you’d originally set aside. So, it was with a (slightly guilty) sense of satisfaction, that I discovered although a week had passed since my last visit, the classroom still needed a final coat of paint, and the glossing hadn’t even been started yet.

It seems it’s not just me then. Phew!

The walls had already received one slick of sparkly white emulsion, so I didn’t feel too nervous about putting paintbrush to wall, and applying an extra coat. After all, it was only white-on-white, even I couldn’t mess that one up!

Again, people dropped by on their way to and from the farm kitchen, and we’d soon amassed a gaggle of enthusiastic young helpers. I was merrily painting away, congratulating myself on learning a Useful Life Skill and imagining all the pennies I’d save by never having to hire a painter/decorator. Then I turned around and saw half the pot of paint had disappeared in the space of twenty minutes. Where it had disappeared to, turned out to be the wall where the younger of our painting posse had stationed themselves at the beginning of the session, and were now still enthusiastically painting away.

Now that the room was approximately five centimetres smaller than it had been twenty minutes ago, we decided it was high time we put a lid on the emulsion, and commenced glossing.

The gloss was a beautiful colour, somewhere between lilac and blue. I enthused about its calming, cooling qualities, and how such a tranquil shade would be conductive to learning - and then felt a little overly New-Age-ee when I was told it had been chosen because it wasn’t anything remotely like blue - Sheffield Wednesday - or red - Sheffield United. Still, we all agreed it was a pretty colour.

Now, dipping your brush into a football-neutral shade of lilac, and then carefully edging your way around the window frames and skirting boards, is far more nerve wracking than rubbing a white roller across an already-white wall. But, I took a deep breath and made my first stroke (across the metre-deep window sill, I’m not that brave!) and when no-one shrieked that I’d done it wrong, I’d ruined the whole thing, now the entire classroom was going to have to be redecorated/demolished, I felt a little more confident. Soon, I was painting the window ledge, the window frame, and even risking the sharp edges around the corners of the window. And no-one shouted at me that I’d ruined the entire thing and it all had to be started again. Not even once.

By four o’clock the painting was all but finished, and I could step back and observe our work with pride. True, the young guns probably would have preferred a more controversial, football-themed colour scheme, but the blue-tinged lilac borders and bright, clean white walls looked pretty snappy. And, while I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to redecorate my own house top-to-toe, I won’t think twice about picking up a paintbrush and freshening up plain walls with a quick lick of emulsion in the future.

And, as a completely unexpected bonus, I now own one pair of lilac-splattered trainers that make a great talking point down my local pub. “What’s that on your shoes?” “Oh, I was just painting this classroom at a farm the other day, you know, as you do…….”
 

Posted by Jessica ( 12:42 PM )
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