‘A bad workman blames his tools.’ Robby joked.
‘According to this, it paints a wall eight times faster than a brush, saving time and effort.’ Nina began to read from the pamphlet. ‘Big surface projects like ceilings, exterior sidings, walls, and fences get a consistent finish with any coating. Ha! It sounds so easy.’
‘So, in theory, you should have this whole place done by the time I get back from this job.’ Robby said, gesticulating his hand around the room and referring to his trip to a National Trust property where he and his team of workers would be dangling off the side of a country house for the best part of a week.
Nina swallowed. ‘I didn’t quite say that, but it’s a cordless, battery-powered spray gun that you point at the wall. I’m all over it. What could possibly go wrong?’
‘Okay.’ Robby tried to keep a straight face. ‘Let's break this down. The main thing is the battery is fully charged for it to work efficiently.’
Nina flipped the spray painter over and checked the battery compartment. ‘Yes, it's all charged up. I made sure of that last night. It's just the actual spraying part that seems daunting.’
Robby nodded. ‘The trick with these is to keep a steady hand and maintain an even distance from the wall. You don't want to get too close or too far away.’
‘You seem to know a lot about these.’
‘Try using a cordless device when dangling from a piece of rope.’ Robby laughed. ‘We don’t paint things, but it’s the same theory. Hold it something like this much away.’ Robby held his hands out in front of him. ‘Ten to twelve inches, thirty centimetres or something.’
‘Right.’ Nina looked at Robby sceptically. ‘What about the speed? How fast should I move?’
‘Steady, but not too slow. You want to avoid drips,’ Robby joked. ‘No drips or droopiness. It’s a slow dance.’
Nina giggled as Robby moved his hips. She gulped, but didn’t let him see. She really did like those hips and how they performed. ‘A slow dance with a paint sprayer. Now, that's something I never thought I'd hear, and I thought my life was bad when I was in the flat.’
Robby continued. ‘Overlap your strokes slightly, that way, you won't miss any spots.’
Nina nodded, absorbing the information. ‘Overlap, steady speed, ten to twelve inches. Got it. And what about corners and edges? I'm guessing the slow dance doesn't quite cut it there.’
‘You'll be fine. I'll be back before you know it.’ Robby pretended to be serious. ‘I want it all done and dusted by the time I’m back so we can start to move in.’
Nina walked Robby to the door, the instruction sheet still in hand. ‘Hopefully, by the time you get back, you'll be walking into a freshly painted masterpiece. Or, at the very least, something that doesn't look like a disaster zone.’
‘I have every faith in you. It's just paint. Worst case scenario, we repaint. No disasters here.’ Robby kissed her and turned to leave. ‘Right, I’ll message you when I get there. Have fun.’
Nina turned back to the room, sprayer in hand. ‘Fun? Not my idea of fun. Alright, let's do this.’
As she prepared the sprayer and filled it with paint, Nina went over Robby's advice in her head. ‘Battery, check. Steady hand, check. Slow dance moves, check,’ she recited, trying to pump herself up for the task ahead of painting the harbour property. It was going to be a long day.
As she fussed with the sprayer, she thought about Robby’s words about them moving into her place. The one thing she hadn’t liked about the proposal was the fact that it changed things about where they lived. She sort of wanted to keep her property to herself, but she wasn’t sure why. There’d been a slightly heated conversation about it. Something kept telling her that she didn’t want to move into Robby’s house. Just as when she’d first moved permanently to Lovely Bay, it didn’t feel right to her. Deep down, she couldn’t put her finger on why, but she assumed it had something to do with Andrew as a lot of things had been in her life.
After a lot of debating, they’d settled that they’d live in Nina’s new place, see how it went and put Robby’s up for rent then work it all out further down the track. Best laid plans.
Nina mulled it over as she fussed with the sprayer and then found herself repeating Robby's mantra in her head likea meditation chant. ‘Battery check, steady hand, slow dance moves,’ she muttered under her breath, aiming the sprayer at the wall. The first press of the trigger hissed and sent a mist of paint across the surface much faster than she anticipated. The air was blue. There wasn’t a lot of dancing going on. More a clumsy shuffling and quite the fair share of swearing. Nina frowned at what was in front of her. It looked nothing like the wall on the side of the sprayer box. The paint coverage was uneven, with some areas dripping while others seemed barely touched.
She stepped back to assess her progress and let out a frustrated sigh. ‘This is harder than it looks,’ she said to the empty room. ‘Why am I doing this to myself? How did I get here?’ She pressed the trigger again and aimed. The more she tried to correct her mistakes, the more she seemed to make. ‘What was I thinking? What the actual?’
Determined not to let the sprayer win, Nina pressed on, reminding herself that before she’d moved to Lovely Bay, she’d had little choice but to get on with doing things herself. She continued to talk to the empty room. ‘Robby's going to need a blindfold when he comes back.’
An hour or so later, she’d sort of mastered it. It was nothing like dancing, not even close. She had to keep her core still to hold the sprayer up and gently move it back and forth. It looked easy, but holding her arm at the angle made it ache and hurt. As she stood outside with a cup of tea for a break, she glanced at the instruction sheet again, wondering if there was some crucial piece of advice she'd missed. It seemed to her to be a lot harder than it appeared.
Once she’d finished her tea and was back inside, it didn’t look quite as bad as when she’d been critically assessing it, and slowly but surely, the room began to take on a more uniform colour; though far from perfect, it was an improvement. Nina convincedherself that perfection was overrated anyway and that the place was at least now clean. There was one way of looking at it; the only way was up.
Several hours later, with paint splatters dotting her face and hair, Nina stepped back to evaluate her work. The walls were indeed painted, albeit with a few runs and missed spots here and there. She spoke to the wall for about the fiftieth time that day. ‘Not quite a masterpiece, though it is now sanitised.’ She felt as if there was white paint everywhere.
With her hands on her hips, she nodded to herself. Not bad, not bad at all. She ticked an imaginary accomplishment box rather pleased with herself. She had tackled something out of her comfort zone and while not exact, she’d managed to crack on with it and make a significant change. It seemed there were many changes now in her life.
As she surveyed the room, her phone buzzed from her pocket buried under her paint-splattered overalls. She carefully wiggled her phone out of her pocket, trying not to smear paint on the screen. It was a message from Robby.
Robby:How's the painting coming along? Should I prepare for a surprise when I get back?
