When we arrived at Gabi,
the house had been closed up for a few years. During their occasional visits,
my in-laws had not done much major maintenance, and after many winters, the
dampness of snow and rain had seeped through the walls and into the paint. The
walls and doors and windows of every room were chipped and peeling. When I
looked around in those first few weeks, I saw the house badly needed some care. In between bouts of clearing brush around the
house, and before the major tree chopping, George and I scraped off the old
paint, starting with the doors and the windows.
The paint on the doors had been a high gloss gray that
had faded, curled, and chipped, becoming a dull and depressing entrance to each
room. We realized that the old paint was probably lead-based, so we waited to
scrape and sand until the twins napped in the afternoons while the boys played
outside. Or until evenings, when they all slumbered safely in their room. On
American television we had seen vivid television spots that showed a little
girl absentmindedly eating paint chips while looking through a window. The
voice-over warned parents to prevent lead poisoning in children by eliminating all paint
chips. And so we did. (We had no idea that sanding the paint probably left
powdered lead residue in the air that could still hurt them.) We wanted to
renew our surroundings and erase years of fingerprints, smoke film, and
dampness that had worn down the original finish. I also wanted to erase the
presence of all the others who had lived, successfully or not, in that house at
Gabi. We wanted to make a clean, fresh start, to make our own mark on our own part
of the house.
We settled on an off-white,
high gloss paint for both the doors and the windows, one that could be washed. (Ironically,
I realize now that it was also probably lead-based.) But our biggest problem
was the number of doors. Every room had three sets of double doors, one to the
hallway (with the stone stairs), one to a balcony, and another set that was
shared with the adjoining room. Only the living room had no balcony access, but
it had an extra set of windows, and it adjoined two rooms, so had three sets of doors plus an extra window! In total there were
eighteen doors, each one about eight feet tall and two sided—a lot of
wood to scrape, sand, and paint. (See picture below or watch the background in Paul’s
birthday video.)
A later picture and actually downstairs, but mirrors the upstairs doors. |
We decided to start with the room-side of the doors. The hallway-sides were not as
chipped and dirty, and we didn’t have to look at them as often, so they could
wait. When we made our
plans we didn’t realize it would take weeks to finish one side of all of the
doors and both sides of the windows, but we were anxious to get started as we
knew the shine of clean paint would brighten our mood as we created our own
space.
We considered carefully
the wall colors to surround us. On our bedroom ceiling a blue mural hung over
our bed: a central cluster of flowers surrounded by a striped and flowered
border. Although the mural was partially damaged, it was very pretty and leant
a distinctly Italian air to our private life, so we wouldn't paint it. For the
walls of our bedroom, we matched a blue from the mural.
Sample of ceiling |
Our living room had
three sets of windows and lots of light, so we chose a cheerful, pale
lemon-lime color for the walls, to reflect the sun. When we finished it became
my favorite room. I still remember the
Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” blasting from my tape recorder as I danced
around with the bright walls reflecting the sun and my mood. The darker kitchen
had only one set of windows and one narrow set of balcony doors, and it was
more likely to suffer splashes and spills, so we decided to paint the walls a light,
bright ivory semi-gloss. With fresh cans of paint lined up in the garage,
we wanted to start immediately, but we had to wait.
George’s
parents decided to install central heating with radiators in each room, another
major upheaval that interfered with our painting project. Dario, the stonemason
chipped channels in the solid concrete walls into which the hot-water pipes and
wiring were nestled, and then he plastered over them. That meant each room was filled with dust from the pounding, and every room sported long channels of raw plaster beside each radiator which had to be painted. We waited until the
stonemason had finished, and the oil-heater had been installed and tested, before
we continued. We couldn't wait to get started on our project, but first George had to paint both sides of his
parents’ eight doors downstairs. It was frustrating to wait, but painting my in-laws’ doors and walls was a small price to pay for
their investment in central heating for the entire house.
That sounds really good doesn’t it? Except I left a lot out.
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