Well, colour me happy – I’m in the mood to paint

Rab returns from B&Q with a tin full of fantasticness but it turns out his hall is slightly larger than huge and the job is going to take longer than it does to paint the Forth Bridge

In the annals of domestic daftness, special mention should be made of my recent decision to paint the hall. I say “hall”, but that’s just a small thing in itself. Unfortunately, the “hall” goes up the stairs with, you know, ceilings and everything. It’s a huge job.

I don’t know what possessed me. It started, like many ill-advised exercises, at B&Q, where I had gone to buy some rope and came back with a tin of paint. You know how it is.

But the painting mood had been growing on me for some time. The hall walls were dull and marked in many places.

So I thought I’d try this paint on one wall.

However, once I started that I had to finish the lot. And at the time of writing I’ve only got one coat done – on threequarters of the walls and ceilings.

The paint was some fancy dan affair that was meant to reflect light. Such nonsense. At any rate, it’s as thin as gruel and going to need three coats.

I must say that, once I realised I was going to have to paint the entire hall, and that it would take many days, I went at it with a mad zeal. Once more, I was about to put the house on the market, and now everything would be delayed by this ill-thought out project. It was such a lot of work.

But it was like that story I told recently of walking great distances on Skye. You just get the head down and put one foot in front of the other until, eventually, you get there.

Not that I am there yet, but the transformation of the hoose is taking place. In a surprise development, I decided to go with the mob and use white or “neutral” paint. It just means colourless and, to me, has always seemed desensitising.

But I must say, the joint does look brighter. Previously, the walls were sort of peach or beige, which had started to look a little tired. They’ve been that colour for decades, I fancy, and I couldn’t find a colour to match it (my original hope had been just to paint over the mucky bits).

The worst thing about the whole exercise has been the stains. Doesn’t matter how much cover I put on the floor, as soon as I lift it, the floor has about as much paint on it as do the walls. It’s on banisters. It’s on bookcases that are miles away from the locus.

It’s a bit like food stains down my shirt. I don’t even have to be eating.

But if someone else is having a feed in the vicinity, somehow the stains will go down my shirt. It’s a stain magnet.

So I spend as much time rubbing paint off the floor and elsewhere as I do putting it on the walls.

Still, when the job is done, I’m sure I will feel a real sense of achievement and satisfaction.

All too soon, however, another project will begin. I’ll be in B&Q for a new tap-washer and come away with fence posts. The job will seem endless. But, by the cunning stratagem of taking one step at a time, we will get there in the end.

Picture: Getty Images. Rab has vowed to conquer his hall, one brushtroke at a time.