Voltaire Was Right

We have a strange architectural feature in our home.   Our fireplace opens to the great room on one side and the dining room on the other; however, the third side is cut at a 45 degree angle, creating a foundation for a triangular void that leads out to the deck.  When we bought the house, there were two sets of sliders closing off this space from the adjoining rooms with a third set opening to the large outdoor deck.  Because this triangular space is nearly 2 stories high and comes to a point on the ceiling, we nicknamed it “the atrium.”  In reality, it was a 3-sided glass prism, unheated, with barely finished walls.

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

Over the years I have puttered with this room, trying to turn it from an eyesore to a “feature.”  I removed the interior sliders and finished the openings into the house, supplying it with 4-season climate control.  The exterior sliders had long-ago lost their seal, causing them to be not only drafty but also foggy inside.  I had them coated with a low-e film (the same product applied to the John Hancock Building) in order to keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  These same sliders also had no working locks, requiring us to bury wooden dowels in the tracks for security as an alternative to bolting them tight.  For many years, these solutions were good enough.

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

Last summer, I could stand it no more.  I hired a construction company to replace the wall of leaky 40-year old glass with weather-tight French doors.  It was a revelation.  After a mere two-day invasion by professional-caliber workers, the contractors removed all the debris and the old doors, leaving nothing but a glorious wall of bright-light-emitting glass and a bill.   It was the first time I ever hired a full blown construction company to do a home-improvement project.  Normally, I enjoy playing general contractor to a collection of variously-skilled handymen, but this project presented unique challenges that were best left to experts. When the project finished on time and on budget, I realized the value of using people who had done this type of job dozens of times before.  It was a lesson in penny wise and pound foolish.

There was just one problem.  The construction company did not do finished painting work.   The 6-panel wall of windows and French doors came fully finished from the factory, requiring no additional painting.  But there were a few dozen linear feet of moldings that were lightly primed and installed with a nail gun.  I would need to get a professional painter to complete the cosmetic finishes.

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

As beautiful as the new doors were, they made the rest of the space, which is finished with horizontal planks of “ship lap,” look worse.  Ship lap resembles paneling, except that it has a rough surface and when aligned, the boards have deep ½ inch gaps between them.  Long before we moved in 15 years ago, there had been a leak around the chimney, causing the boards to be marbled with water stains near the peak of the ceiling.  My husband loved the retro 70s look of the unfinished wood planks, but I could no longer stand the marred appearance.  Rather than trash a room full of wood, we decided to seal and paint the planks with a nice low-VOC product.  It was a small improvement that could be incorporated easily into the job of painting the moldings. 

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

I measured the space to be painted; it was barely 200 square feet of wall.  Most of the room was either glass or brick from the back of the fireplace.   I called one of my favorite handymen who was always looking for small day jobs that he could do on Saturdays to supplement his regular job.   At the end of the first half hour it became clear that he had bitten off more than he could chew.  Not only were the grooves difficult to paint—they had three sharp sides to them—but the rough scratched surface of the raw wood planks created so much surface area that it consumed primer and paint at an alarming rate.  He was immediately regretting not bringing reinforcements.

After an hour in which he barely cut in half of the sharp angles in the ceiling, I offered to grab the glazing compound to begin filling the nail holes in door and window trims.  When I had finished that task an hour later, I picked up a small brush and began priming the grooves, hoping that he would catch up quickly as soon as he could switch to a roller.  Another hour later, I had primed everything within six feet of the floor, while the painter was still on a high ladder working the angles and grooves at the ceiling.  We finished a full gallon of primer and still had so much to cover.  I fetched another gallon from the paint store up the street.   When my husband came home, he took the brush from me and primed everything between 6 and 8 feet off the ground.  Still, the poor guy was working the ceiling on his tall ladder.

I finally insisted on a lunch break around 2pm.  Afterward, we switched to the paint color, beginning again with the process of filling the nasty grooves—this time with paint. Although the primed surface was easier to cover than the unfinished wood, it was nonetheless a full employment act for the three of us for the rest of the afternoon until nearly 9pm. 

I felt truly sorry for this poor man who worked hard all week and then came to help us with our “small project” on his day off.  To his credit, he did not want to leave us with a partially finished eyesore, trying with all his might to reach end of job.  This was a very small space (the room measures only 96 square feet), but the height of the ceilings and the nature of the wood translated into a huge amount of painted surface. 

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

I think my poor handyman was glad when he reached the bottom of the gallon can of paint.  It meant an abrupt end to the day’s work, even though the job was not finished.  He had rolled paint across all of the boards, but an area of grooves still remained unpainted on the ceiling.  Quickly, he vacuumed and swept up, running out as quickly as possible.

I hope this experience did not sour my favorite handyman on doing future projects for us.  I still have a long list of “simple” projects with his name on them.  But before I embark on the next one, I will remember this painful day and the sage wisdom of Voltaire:  “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”