The Wanderlust Lady and the Door to Door Salesman - 24

January 23, 2012

A few days later, I got the solicitor's letter, which said the Mills would employ me for a salary of £1250 for the entire job no matter how long it took – with the bonus of being allowed to live in the house rent free during the period I was painting. They required me to paint it white, undercoat and topcoat, inside and the woodwork outside – and to arrange for the removal of all the excess furniture – just leaving enough for the place to look lived in. And I was to tidy up the garden. They wanted the house ready for the market by Monday the 4^th of March. That gave me less than six weeks.

“Are you sure you can do the job and make money on that salary?” asked Sam. “You'll need all sorts of equipment – like ladders and tools like brushes and rollers and steaming stuff for removing wall paper, etc.”

“They put £250 on top of what I quoted them for – so that I presume is to include the supplies of stuff I'll need. Maybe I can get things at a cheaper price if I say I'm in the trade.”

“You'd have to become a business then, and go through all those hoops. I'd keep it simple for now and if this goes well, you can think of doing more of it – and setting yourself up properly.”

So I signed the contract, sent it back, and by the 21st I had a letter saying I was officially employed, as of January 23rd and the key to the house was enclosed.

Sam, showing a lot more good will than I expected him to, lent me quite a lot of equipment from the garage – and gave me a lift over with it. When we got there, he went in with me, and made suggestions about how I should go about it.

“If I were you, I'd start in the house. Wait till the weather is better to do the outside stuff – but be prepared to drop the inside and work outside whenever it's good and dry – because you can't get the weather to come when you're ready. You have to do your work to coincide with it. In the house, do the living room first – move all the furniture out, including curtains, and then you have a huge space to work on. Them having suggested white throughout was really lucky. You won't have to keep washing out and changing brushes. And make sure you put a dust sheet down over the floors and carpets, as no matter how careful you are, you're bound to spill some paint. And if you put masking tape around the edges you can keep the paint off that, and do the same the other way when you do the gloss paint on the woodwork. You're lucky that the old lady didn't do much decorating – as there aren't layers and layers of paint on the woodwork that would need to be sanded off first.”

“This isn't supposed to be a perfect job – just enough to make it look clean and attractive to the buyers.”

“Yes, but people notice sloppy jobs, and that would put them off – even if they intended redoing it all straight away after they bought it.”

Finally Sam left, and I surveyed “my home” once more. The Mills had taken the paper stuff out of the filing cabinet, and quite a lot of the books from the bookshelves. I needed to dig up the keys from the garden and see if they found the silver and pictures in the attic. My guess is that they never went up there, and that stuff was still as much mine as it was before. They wouldn't miss what they didn't know they owned.

It was pouring with rain and freezing cold, so this was not a good time to go digging in the garden, so that could wait till another occasion – and I would be perfectly justified digging in that area – loosening the soil – getting rid of weeds, putting in bedding plants.

I'd done my homework and made a list of the things I'd want.  I knew there was a store that sold paint in Marple – it would be more expensive than if I went into the bigger DIY shops in Stockport, but without transportation, I would just have to do the best I could. I might get a bit off for buying in bulk. I needed to work out the total number of square metres – for all the walls and ceilings for the entire house.   After my rough calculations were checked and rechecked, I walked down to the village – along my little favourite short cut – but openly now – not skulking to make sure nobody saw me switch from Stan to Minnie and back.

I thought of Minnie every time I walked across the park to Marple town centre. She had loved being in this park – everyone said that about her – that she spent most of her life here. Sometimes I felt like she was sort of looking over my shoulder – helping me out – willing me on. Think of how lucky I'd been, considering what I might have had to contend with – prison – no nice job waiting for me. Every time I thought about Minnie I found myself rubbing my gold bracelet – although it didn't look anything like gold. Nobody even commented on it – that was how ordinary it looked. I had to top up the shoe polish every week or so, but it was sort of my good luck charm. I was sure Minnie would understand.

The paint shop was just beyond the jewellery store. I was the only one in the paint shop. “Hi,” I said, “I've been employed to paint somebody's house top to bottom before they sell it – and I've never bought paint before, so maybe you could help me out.”

“No problem, young man, now what colours do you want?”

“White everywhere.”

“Just plain white – not any of the shades of pale that are so popular these days?”

“I was instructed to do it in white, so I suppose that means the very basic ordinary white.”

“The cheapest good paint you can get is £10 for a 5 litre can. The gloss for the windows and doors is dearer – about £5 per litre.

I told him how I needed all the right equipment, but didn't have a car, so could only take what I could carry on one trip. So I bought two cans of the 10 litre size of white paint to start with – which he assured me was a one coat special – no need for undercoating and he said that should do two good sized rooms. They were heavy, but I was young and they balanced off. He said he would give me a 10% discount – and if and when I found that I needed more stuff, he would try to run it to 15%. I bought a 14 piece roller set for £15, and two sizes of brushes.

“You'll need gloss paint for the windows and doors and skirting boards.”

“I'll buy that later when I get the walls done.”

“What are the walls like now?”

“Sort of a dirty yellow coloured paint – not very nice, but not peeling off or anything.”

“No wallpaper?”

“No.”

“That's lucky then.”

“I suppose I should buy a dust sheet to put on the floor.”

“Save yourself some money. Use old sheets. If you don't have any – go into the charity shop down the road. You can probably get them for very little, and they'll do you just fine.”

“Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, I think I know where there are lots of old sheets,” remembering that Minnie had had a dresser full of them. He said to make sure the walls were clean and dry before I started painting, and that I should wash my brushes out with just ordinary water. He said that when it came to the oil painting for the outside, it would be very different.

“Oh, and I need a ladder too.”

“I don't sell those. But the Hollins up the road does. You could try there. Are the ceilings very high?”

“No, just ordinary, about two and a half metres I suppose.”

“You could try doing it standing on a chair – and if that doesn't work, then you can invest in a ladder. But try the cheap and simple – that's my advice.”

I paid £75 for the paint and other equipment, which I put in my rucksack and started to leave. “Yeah, thanks again. I'll be back when I've finished this.”

“That should do you for two rooms of average size, if you don't need to put two coats on. I guess it depends on how dirty your yellow paint really looks and if it shows through. Good luck, anyway.”

So off I trudged back the way I'd come. I went past the charity shop and the hardware store, both on the way back. Marple was beginning to feel like home to me now. I had been in probably half the stores in the town already, one way or another. Just like every time I crossed the park I thought of Minnie, every time I crossed Station Road I thought about her getting hit by a van – and wondered if it really had been Sadie that did it. I hadn't heard any more about it – but thought that maybe one day I'd call in at the police station and see if they'd got any farther with their investigations. I wonder if whoever did it would go to jail.

My arms were pretty sore by the time I got home – that was a lot of paint to be carrying. But I was in pretty good shape, with my community service job involving physical outside jobs – like digging and stuff. I learned a lot about how to deal with a garden. I could make Minnie's look a treat. I suppose I'd have to buy some gardening equipment too.

I figured there was no time like the present to get started. I'd borrowed a radio from home – told them it was an absolute necessity in this place with no TV, no nothing. So putting it on Radio 1, I went into the living room to decide what to do first.

First of all I needed to move all the furniture to one side, paint that, and then move everything back and do the other side. I put the two easy chairs on top of the couch, and took the remaining books out of the bookcase and put them in the front hall on the floor. The bookcase itself I could just fit into the kitchen, and the lamps went in my bedroom along with the pictures from off the walls. Once that was done I got out the sheets. I decided that since I didn't want the furniture to look any worse than it was, I'd better cover it with sheets too, as well as the floor. The guy at the shop said to do the ceiling first – get it over with. He suggested putting tape over the bits around the light fittings and plugs so I wouldn't get paint on them, but I couldn't be bothered to be that fussy. I'd just be careful when it came to those areas.

Remembering what he said about making sure the walls and ceiling were clean before I started, I got a wet tea towel, and tied it onto a broom, and swished it over all the surfaces of the walls, climbing on the chair to get into the corners and farther bits of the ceiling. The rag got pretty dirty, but at least it would now be easier and better to paint.

I pulled the kitchen table - which would be my supply depot – into the hall to minimize the distance I'd have to travel with the roller, and put a sheet down on that too. I'd first thought I'd have the roller in one hand and the paint pad in the other, but it was just too awkward. I opened one of the huge tins with a knife blade. Then I dumped about a couple of cups worth of paint into it, and got out the largest roller – the guy said that was the one to do the ceiling with. I loaded up the paint on the roller, and stood on two chairs – one for each foot – and started out. It really made a difference, but my hair was soon covered with flecks of paint – I guess maybe that was why painters wore caps. I'd have to get out Minnie's old rain hat to wear again.

After maybe half an hour – half the ceiling was done, and it looked pretty good. I'd gone over the light fitting a bit, but managed to get at it quickly with a wet rag and wiped that off. The two walls took another hour or so, and by then, I was both tired and hungry. Time for a break. But what a difference. The white seemed to do the trick with the one coat.

I made myself a coffee and had one of the cheese sandwiches that I'd brought with me from my mum's house. I'd stocked up on basic foodstuffs – just bread, milk, cheese, eggs – so that I wouldn't have to go out shopping for a few days anyway, and remembered to include some biscuits which I had so keen to have last time I lived here.

After my snack, surveying my work, I decided that all considered, I had done a pretty good job. There were a few paint splodges dropped onto the sheet on the floor, but that was okay. That was what it was there for. I moved the sheet out of the way, and changed the position of the furniture, so it was now all on the opposite wall – and was pleased that the paint after only quite a short time seemed to be dry. I'd opened the windows to keep the smell to a minimum, so the breeze probably also helped in the drying time.