I spent the weekend painting the kitchen. Denise had started painting the kitchen last weekend while I was out of town visiting my daughter for Father's Day. And while her heart was in the right place (trying to surprise me with a full kitchen rehab by the time I returned home) it was a much bigger job than one person should have attempted. 

Our house was built in the late Seventies and is full of all the design features that homebuilders thought were really cool in the late Seventies. The coolest feature? Cathedral ceilings. The ceiling in our kitchen is at least fifteen feet up.

Did I mention the "popcorn" ceiling tecture? Who is the idiot that invented this? Someone with stock in a spiderweb removal company, that's who. 

Popcorn ceiling texture is the greatest thing in the world for collecting spiderwebs. And dust bunnies flung off the ceiling fan. It also makes it near impossible to get a clean straight edge where the wall meets the ceiling. 

Luckily the popcorn only covers the dining area, which is the lowest point of our sloping late Seventies cathedral ceiling. I was able to mask the ceiling/wall intersection with blue painter's tape. The rest of the ceiling is smooth, so I bought  one of those plastic edging tools that are guaranteed to give you a clean straight edge. But again, this portion of the ceiling is fifteen feet up. I am only five feet six inches up, so edging this portion meant climbing to the top of a ladder and then using a pole to make the edging tool reach the ceiling. 

A short sidebar. I love HGTV. Since I really don't drink anymore, or smoke crack, or any of the other things people do to eat up the hours in the day, I watch HGTV. The problem is HGTV makes you think that you can do ANYTHING when it comes to fixing up your home. HGTV makes redoing your driveway in Spanish paver tiles look like a one hour job that a one legged man could do with both eyes closed. He can't and neither can I. 

But, with the help of Denise and her mom and her Aunt Jody, the job got done. Mike Holmes from "Holmes Inspection" would do a huge spit take if he saw my part, but the results aren't half bad. I'm not going to be hired as the painting contractor for the next HGTV Dream Home, but we're happy with it. 

But if I ever get my hands on the yayhoo that invented popcorn ceiling texture - he's a dead man.