Yesterday Kristen and I set out to accomplish two things: (1) frost the glass in the small conference room, and (2) paint the small conference room walls.  We had set ourselves up for success.  The day before we’d taken a trip to Home Depot and purchased (we thought) all of the necessary supplies.  We were caffeinated, dressed in painting clothes, and in the office ready to work by 9 am.  Our smooth start to the day was the end of the day’s smooth.

The small conference room has large windows that look into the commercial arcade at The Linden.  We don’t want to lose light from the hallway, but need more privacy than clear glass provides.  We decided to frost the glass using a frosting spray that looks and works like spray paint.  After cleaning the windows, taping the windowsills and the line where we wanted the frosting to end, and reading the directions multiple times (I swear), Kristen donned a scary mask and commenced the spraying.

We had purchased two cans of the spray to be safe, even though only one can should have been necessary for our square footage.  Despite Kristen’s vigorous can shaking and the direction’s assurances that we would need two and “perhaps more” coats, two coats of spray left us with sorta-frosted glass and every line from every sweep of the spray can clearly visible.

We didn’t give up.  We hoped that another layer of spray would blend the coverage and fix the streaking problem.  We went to Home Depot and bought two more cans of spray.

It didn’t work.  The glass grew increasingly frosty streaky while we grew increasingly frustrated.

For the third time in two days, we went to Home Depot.  We bought acetone and sundries with which to remove the dumb spray frost.  We bought massive stickers that you apply to windows to frost them.  We bought a little refrigerator to hold water and beer.

After several hours, we once again had clear windows and jettisoned the idea of applying the stickers right away.  We both have perfectionist tendencies and decided that wrangling with massive stickers after ten frustrating hours spent accomplishing nothing more than getting back to where we had started the day was a poor idea.

So we painted the darn wall.