This could actually be retitled, “ONE lesson I learned from painting my kitchen,” with the post shortened to one line, “Don’t even think about it.”
However, you’ll want your money’s worth, so here are my eight painful lessons:
1. Estimate a time and triple it. It’s not the actual painting that takes the time. It’s the preparation, the sanding, vacuuming, cleaning, covering, taping, etc. The ratio of prep time to painting time is probably about 10:1. About the same for preparation and preaching.
2. Know your limits. I did quite well using the paint roller on the wide kitchen walls. I should have stayed with that rather than taking on the facings and window frames as well. As in painting, if you bite off more than you can chew in preaching, you can mess up a lot of the good work you’ve already done.
3. Clean up mess immediately. It’s so hard to stop and clean up drips and sprays when slapping on the paint. But delay means drying, and drying means chisels instead of tissues. Preaching mistakes are best corrected and cleaned up immediately rather than have worse problems to deal with later.
4. When you are getting angry and frustrated, stop. Anger does not improve painting or preaching.
5. Don’t take shortcuts. Spray painting seemed such a timesaver. But despite wearing a face mask I ended up not only with a white nose, but white nose hairs and nostrils too. I dread to think what my lungs look like. My kids favorite proverb on Saturday night was, “A hoary head is a crown of glory.” If you don’t want to wash your hair with turps, stick with good old-fashioned paint brushes. Similarly, not every modern promise of faster and easier sermons beats tried, tested, and trusted methods.
6. Don’t spread the work over multiple days. A couple of concentrated periods of time produce far better results than catching the odd 30 mins here and there.
7. Your wife is not always your best critic. Sometimes she sees you are so crushed by the DIY disaster, that love takes over and she assures you that really are the next Leonardo Da Vinci. Ditto some sermons.
8. Stick to your calling. Just as I don’t want a painter as my preacher, I shouldn’t ask a preacher to paint my kitchen.