by
Anita Sands Hernandez
After
spending a month looking for an apartment, and finding only ghastly, overpriced
cracker box units, I decided to rent an 80 year old, 1 story Spanish
house. It was in a weird part of town but it was much LESS money than an
apartment. I asked the home's owner to give me a deal as I'd paint, tile
and carpet the thing. The man thought about it and agreed to l00$ off.
I was ecstatic and moved in, 3 bedrooms for 950$ a month! 
First
day, all my so-called friends stopped by. From them I learned this was
the wrong side of town. It was the barrio and the house was a 'White Elephant.'
It would take ten men to paint it. Yes, I responded but I needed exercise,
I craved big, empty spaces. Besides, I loved ethnics. Hadn't I keep the
kids' daddy's last name? You'll need to put it on the mailbox then, they
said. And besides a Rottweiler, you'll need roommates. I'm not that social,
I responded as I showed them the door. Newly on my own, I didn't want roomies.
I'd turn two of the White Elephant's 3 bedrooms into work rooms. Having
a single office space had NEVER been enough. My old office was crowded
with computers, reference books; shelves of computer discs in different
sizes for different machines; shelves of scripts. Then, at cross odds,
an entire section of astrology chart files for clients, and all this clutter
made it impossible to do the reflective but messy work of sewing and painting
in the same room. The disciplines were mutually antagonistic.
For
art work, I needed a great deal of light, large work tables at chest height,
plenty of space and a good music system. One corner had to be dedicated
to storage shelves. For scripts, I needed to do manuscript sorting along
with shelving and filing. Couldn't do that in my primary office where I
must type daily and see astrology clients, and where I require neatness,
clarity of mind. I have lost some of my best scripts in the mess that used
to be in my primary office, not to speak of clients who take a dim view
of psychics with clutter. I really needed two work rooms, maybe
three ---as I didn't want to place OLD computers in my typing, client-seeing,
primary office. Doing 'On line' astro-prediction services with a 24 hour
modem was in the back of my mind too. People who refuse to work for corporations,
and won't hoe anyone else's row, need home work areas with computers
and modems.
Cottage
industries are based on having clearly defined work spaces for clearly
defined chores. So I wanted multiple work rooms. This old house was going
to make freelance survival in the city possible.
My
kids came over with house plants and shook their heads, warning me against
the omenous echoes their footsteps made, the huge footage, all those nasty
walls with peeling wallpaper. "You don't expect we're going to help you
make it habitable, do you?" Not me, I crossed my heart. Painting four huge
rooms would be great exercise. If I went to La Costa Health Spa for the
7 days I was planning to spend painting, I'd have paid ten grand for so
much exercise and exhilaration. I am going to save ten grand, plus get
my house painted. I'll do all the work in a week, and turn these distressed
spaces into a new living room, bedroom, office, and sewing room. Why should
I want to share all that joy with kids?
The
kids' eyes narrowed into a suspicious squint. I could see they didn't believe
me and after cleaning out the fridge, they went out the door grumbling
about having a daft mom, leaving me to my Ecstatic Nest Syndrome. I rolled
up my sleeves and went to work.
Little
did I know that I was to discover an innovational technique for resuscitating
the crumbling, wallpapered walls of old homes turning them into magnificent
90's, post-modern, textured finishes that drop the jaws of all who see
them. I didn't see the possibilities myself at first. The first room --the
planned sewing/art room--had layers of peeling wall paper and window shades.
It was murky and disturbing but when I tore off the shades, I saw a magnificent
southern exposure with waving palms, ferns and bananas outside, a lot of
So Cal light. Sure, in the brightness, one could see that the wood window
trim had small pox. Previous inhabitants had stapled up curtains, pitting
the wood. The walls were in really bad shape, crumbling plaster, torn wall
paper, weathered moldings, nicked wainscoting. Little did I know that all
of these were going to be ASSETS.
The
thing is, don't stop to get depressed. Plug in KPFK-FM,
* (live link,) politically conscious talk radio and get right to work with
a claw hammer. Entertained by Roy of Hollywood, Noam Chomsky and Blaise
Bonpane I first tore out all the seedy carpets. I cannily left the carpet
tack strips on. Why? Well, underneath, the wonderful, hard wood floors
were amazingly ugly, scarred, combination puppy-pee stains and rainwater
leak spotted floors. It wasn't my house, I was renting, I didn't need to
invest in the infrastructure or improve the home's value. An ancient Buddhist
text says 'he who can accept being imperfect is the most perfect.' Buddhist
to the end, I accepted the room's blemishes. I didn't want to rent a machine
sander, much less use it or go near eco-toxic varnishes. I prefer the luxury
of carpets under foot. I decided to go for free carpeting. One visit to
a carpeting company and I'd arranged a trade. I'd do fortunetelling for
parties in exchange for a four rooms worth of carpet ends. All carpet men
have ends the size of the average room, or slightly damaged goods, still
sprightly. He did.
I
wasn't worried about installation. I wasn't going to pay huge bucks for
padding, laying. I knew I could find Mexican carpet layers on street corners
outside carpet stores and get them to lay carpet in four rooms for a tenth
of the price a carpet store would charge me for their guys. I'd find them
later. I gave the carpet man a few days to find the end pieces, meanwhile
I rolled up my sleeves
There
was a lot of badly applied wallpaper on all the walls. I wasn't working
at my daily job; I didn't have money to rent a steamer to get the wall
paper off, nor did I have a lot of time to fuss as I have to get back to
earning money, i.e. to my various cottage industries, painting, writing
scripts and articles, seeing astrology clients, talking on psychic hotlines,
running the L.A. Free Screen Writing Co-op, my hobby. So I decided to paint
over all this guck. Again, it wasn't my house and time was a factor. This
health spa exercise vacation could take no more than seven days. I needed
an EASY, fast method. So I steeled myself for just painting over what was
on the walls. Little did I know then, that this would accidentally be the
most beautiful tack to take.
As
I studied the ancient house with its many antique-y architectural features,
I remembered I loved Jocasta
Innes* books on painting walls and always had wanted
to do a room with Renaissance crumbling textures that imitated the ancient,
multi-colored hues of crumbling, faded frescoes. Why not use all that crud
on the walls as texture? Just paint over it like fresh lava boiling over
Pompeii. I made the decision and have forever since been glad I did.
The
next fortuitous accident was the fact that I was too broke to buy just
one shade of paint. Painting ten rooms would mean spending on fifteen gallons
of paint. Or would it? I looked in the garage of this home and found a
dozen cans of paint, in all colors. Lavender, white, pink and a great many
partially filled gallons of different deep copen blues, icy pastel electric
blues and some bright ceruleans all left over from some tenant in the Rainbow
Flower child 70's. Well-sealed, they were all in perfect condition.
I
went to the neighborhood Paint Store, which has a nice habit of remaindering
custom-tinted paints that clients return, in other words, giving you the
best
and most expensive for the least cash. There, among a stack of cans, with
swatches painted onto their lids, I found a flat exterior water
based paint which the clerk warned me was gritty
with textures I
might not want, as well as very slow-drying. It cost 1$ for almost
a gallon as it was a remnant. I opened it, found griege muck with a lot
of texture.
I
ran home and slapped it on the walls and ceiling. When it hit the wallpaper,
the paper bubbled up in places. A day later, still damp, pieces of the
paper were actually coming loose. I slapped them back on the wall haphazardly,
not necessarily where they'd come from, either. The paint dried---this
mess hardened. Now it looked like a real, stone wall, rampant with texture.
PERFECT!
I
started on the second layer of paint, but really the first color as the
first layer was just texture. This layer was the background color (so it
has to be the darkest of all the colors you have on hand.) It was rolled
onto all five surfaces smoothly and evenly. I had chosen a bright, dutch
iris shade of dark blue. More loose wall paper pieces came up here and
there and all the cracks in the wall paper started to gape. I deliberately
ripped them open. Gashes appeared at intervals.
My
daughter came to visit and says 'Mommmm, you should have steamed it off
first, are you crazy? "Like a loon" I say, 'see what empty next syndrome
has done to me?' and I keep slashing. I cover the entire room, gashes and
all, with this icy, dark pastel blue. My daughter leaves, shaking her head.
By
the time this coat was dry, I mixed a second color (two shades lighter,
like blueberries and cream) and I begin the interesting work; using a wide
brush dipped in paint then rubbed clean on the edge of the paint can, almost
a dry brush, as there can be no dripping paint, I start 'brushing' the
cheeks of the room. Now here is the sole technique. The brush is held sideways
and loosely so the flat of it from wood head to tip, simultaneously and
lightly brushes across the wall, catching all the crud on the wall. I tickle
the cruddy wall, like stroking a baby, with the flat of the brush covering
a foot long swatch in a single brushstroke. The trick is, the paint only
catches the prominences. In the hollows is the original, dark, iris
blue paint. And, as I'm using a paler and warmer pastel cerulean, the contrast
brings out all the gritty textures. I go over the entire room, four walls
and ceiling.
It's
light, careless work, Jai Uttal is blaring and it goes fast. The only hesitation
is having to climb off the ladder, move it a few feet and climb up again.
There
are now two colors on the wall. It's a little tame for my taste, so next
I mix a bucket of cerulean with white paint to pale it down like melted,
pale, sky-colored ice cream. I baby-kiss the walls on all 5 surfaces so
the pale sky texturing is set off against the two darker blues.
I
have now tickled every surface twice and textured it once and painted it
once. A total of four times over the surfaces but tickling goes fast. Now
there are three colors in overlaying layers. The room starts to look as
if it were all ancient, crumbling, sky-blue stone. Or, in my daughter's
eyes, as if a really bad painter had hit it because the work is different
everywhere. In places, you just can't get an even texture and you see brushstrokes.
Some of my friends say they like the natural stone look, others prefer
the brush-strokey areas and a third group, my kids, are telling me it's
ALL a big mistake and if I move quick and far enough, the owner will never
find me.
But
I dip my last dry brush in white with a little pink and whisk it over ceiling
and walls frosting the peaks, leaving the most contrasting of all the three
color changes on the highest points of four walls and ceiling. Then, I
add a little blue so it's pale lavender and whack a few areas and now the
wall has depth, texture, grit, an almost iridescent winter dawn glimmer
of four shades of pastel. The brush strokes for the most part have disappeared
all that's left is this pulsating rainbow acid trip.
I
stand back and am dazzled. I proudly invite the kids back. They only see
how all the walnut varnished pine lumber on the window sashes, floor and
wainscoting trim doesn't match this candied, pastel-paint theme but I spackle
the staple gun scars, sand lightly, take a piece of thin cardboard, lay
it on the glass, and start doing the window sashes, wainscoting all in
frosty white enamel. They shrug, clean out my refrigerator and leave, but
I see the effect is dynamite. I excitedly call the carpet man asking 'do
you have a 12 x 13 piece yet? He responds: 'Hey, some decorator borrowed
a piece twice that size for a video shoot, and left this big piece out
in the rain, go get it.
I
do, driving into Hollywood, --hoping it's not brown, black or red. Those
are the three colors that will turn me off and make me leave this freebie
in the rain. But it isn't. I get there and see a neutral putty beige which
will look terrific against the wall's icy blues. I go to throw it in my
car. The piece weighs 500 lbs. wet. I can only hope it'll dry to 400. I
drag it and huff and puff and can't move it. Do I really need it? The floors
at home are spattered with five kinds of blue paint. I need it. I commandeer
a male stranger off the street and together we load it into my car.
Perspiring,
I drive triumphantly home, and unload it into the driveway. after scanning
the skies for signs of another rain storm and not seeing one I unroll it
flat, envisioning the sun drying this piece in a day or two.
As
I opened the front door of this huge old Spanish house, I thought how wonderful
it was to rent. If I'd owned the house I'd probably have sanded the hard
wood floors and varnished them, given myself brain cancer from inhaling
old lead paint and new solvent. I'd have steamed off the wallpaper and
sanded the old walls, filling my lungs with zinc and more lead. And if
I had done all that perfect-mundo and survived, I'd still have missed the
miracle of what the four layers of paint did in all the places where the
wallpaper melted off. Anyway, when the bank foreclosed all the work would
have been lost. Renting gave me cheap, free, fast and easy, disposable,
innovative and last of all, but not least, worth writing about.
When
I went into my new art/sewing room and look up at the iridescent stone
walls I again see that it is precisely on these surfaces of multi-layer
textures where dry-brushed paint collects. They're prettier than the flat
places. I've turned rot and crud into crumbling frescoes like those of
Ancient Pompeii. I am inspired. Why not start a new business. POMPEII PAINTERS,
"the old is new, the new is old." Cruddy walls for 150$ a day. I decide
against it as I already have too many cottage industries, but seeing my
own ancient walls I am reminded of Darryl Hannah playing a decorator in
'Wall Street,' a kind of villainously chic perfect foil for the ambitious
Charlie Sheen. She decorates this very plain, square four walls condo he
buys, and does a torn-paper-with -bricks-peeking-thru effect over all over
the walls. It's supposed to speak of the insanity of the woman. That's
pretty much what I did here, but the progression of blues from stormy to
pale to white foam isn't Manhattan sophisticated. It's kind of foamy sea
cottage looking, especially with the white trim, and has a Victorian look.
'Fanny and Alexander' was on the t.v. and I was satisfied to see how my
new room looked just like their airy, summer cottage in Victorian Sweden.
The
next day the sun had dried the carpet; I went to a local barrio carpet
store and asked the owner if he'd lend me one of his carpet layer guys.
"Sure, any morning, I've got a lot of freelance guys here. Take your pick.
Negotiate with them." I came back the next day and found a nice Mexican
gentleman who didn't speak English but who knew how to say 'twenty' and
who laid the carpet in an hour. Now the room was beige and blue, spiffed
with white trim into a bandbox effect and totally immaculate. I moved in
every book case in the house, some extra desks, tables, hung pictures and
created my new work space with my tools: easels, paint stands, sewing machine.
I
ran out and got a lot of dime store sheets, dark blue with big pink roses,
hemming them in an hour and layering them with my old white cotton drapes
and hung them on brass rings, achieving a country effect. I put lace curtains
on brass rods on the lower side of the window a la Fanny and Alexander,
sat back and typed all night on this article in my finished office.
My
hands ached, and so did my back, but the very next morning, I painted the
living room, and the day after, moved on to the bedroom and art room. The
ancient wallpaper of these rooms never failed to buckle and peel, gash
and tear all of which I incorporated into the mess of textures and covered
with slow-drying gritty paint, then the rainbow layers. On the fifth day
I did the bath in semi-gloss and on the sixth day I did the kitchen.
A
kitchen is a special project requiring two items you don't use in the rest
of the house: TSP for scrubbing oily food scum off the walls. Next, semi-gloss
paint, not flat. But I use water soluble semi-gloss, not oil as I don't
want to gas my cats who like to sleep near the oven and are half-gassed
anyway.
When
I finish giving the room 3 or 4 shades of deep to pale turquoise to navaho
sand and frosted with snow white, I add an extra fillip, possible in the
oil and gloss world: I took oil-based ultramarine blue color pigment, (I
used Sherman Williams silk screen paint but artist's oil paint would have
worked just as well,) thinned it with liquid 'scratch-cover' furniture
wax. I glazed every surface, then rubbed it off with a rag, antiquing every
wrinkle.
On
the seventh day I rested. The rented house was transformed. It was a pleasure
to walk in its quiet, airy rooms which carpeted, no longer echoed.
I
begin to decorate. As I drive around the city, trash night yields unassuming
treasures. Can movie star John Philip Law imagine how good that huge, Philippine
wicker armchair he left on Miller Drive looks in my office? Or how his
wrought iron bathroom shelf looks holding paper and seashells next to my
toilet?
Thrift
stores and garage sales beckon and yield up furnishings for my home's huge,
empty spaces. Ancient couch frames get Tahitian cotton staplegunned to
them. Quaint old tables get stapled-on skirts; chest of drawers get a coat
of white enamel which I sand off in places to create instant Fanny and
Alexander rusticity.
To
stand or sit in the house's ancient quietness is a kind of prayer. And
what does one pray? Principally that at the first kiss of autumn rain,
the five layers of paint on that ancient wallpaper don't give up the ghost,
slide off the walls and buckle down onto the floors in a rumpled, soggy
heap and that Mrs. Beverly Hills princess doesn't get a staple in her butt
while she's getting her palm read.
My
children tell me the house has been 'Mickey-Moused' from ass to candlestick
and that it will all fall in, that chaos will return. But as this beauty
was born out of my acceptance of chaos, and I was surfing the river the
way it was pointed, I somehow doubt it.
The
wind catches in the chimes outside the windows and the still, quiet, gentle
voice of my 80 year old house whispers that she can hold out another 80
if I require her to. So, I shrug and tell my children that, until the Iraqis
bring in the first suitcase bomb and doom hits Hell-A, I'll enjoy this
crummy house.
But
I pronounce the word 'crummy' the way the Ancients did, when they called
their newborn babe a 'ratface' so the Gods wouldn't covet him. Kind of
with a wink.
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
*IF YOU WANT TO GET JOCASTA
INNES BOOKS for a dollar
each, go to ABE BOOKS.com
and PUT that authoress' name into the SEARCH ENGINE. Or sometimes if I
want, I put in the title but it's not necessary. PUt author in search box
you get page. a dozen vendors pick one who has paypal. I do. I love paypal.
(LOOK AT BOOK VENDOR INFO to see if he will) THEN hit his WEBPAGE, get
the addie, the email blank say what I just said THEN, go to SEARCH THIS
VENDOR's PAGES. You get a blank, a no, then back up and do it again. Always
go backwards if it says no books by him. So again, you put in another fave
author. Keep trying 'til you find a few books from this vendor so S&H
comes down. If all fails, I just put HISTORY in the title section or CIA
and I can get big choice of history books. Always interesting!