This is a generalised rant about the perils and pitfalls of all the various home-improvement shows on TV.

Just as various models and actors spruik beauty products but neglect to mention the stylists, make-up artists, beauticians, dieticians, personal trainers and surgeons that it takes to make them look so good; home improvement shows glorifying the ease of slapping up a coat of bright paint to “makeover” the house (god, how I hate that over-worked phrase!!!) seldom go into the intricacies of choosing paint-rollers, cleaning materials, how best to cover an atrocious shade of mauve, the pain involved in clambering up and down ladders, kneeling on uneven floors to apply masking tape or the contortions one has to go through just to get an even coat of paint over a less-than-stellar surface.

Oh, they lie by omission when they don’t show you the host of “helpers” and assistants that quietly do all the filthy dog-work by removing the junk, cleaning the space and doing all the in-fills and sanding and paint-stripping.  They never show you where the put the junk and it probably isn’t one of the other rooms of the house – packed to the rafters with boxes of – frankly – total shit. 

Sure enough, the host of the program demonstrates how to fill a little hole with putty and sand it smooth.  But you can bet that it’s twelve other people that take care of ALL THE OTHER holes and blemishes before the next part of the segment is shot.  And don’t get me started on paint-stripping.  It’s a point that absolutely everyone wants to give me advice on but the basic fact will stay the same – I have to get rid of about 60 years worth of oil, lead and plastic paints and I’d much rather breathe stripper fumes than set fire to it with a heat gun.

Paint (almost always a highly-coloured shade over a plain white or pastel background) is blithely rollered onto the wall while the host natters about how it makes the room “pop” or other such inanities.  It’s left to the aforementioned crowd of dogsbodies to roller the rest of the wall, cut in the edges and clean up any goofs.

Now, I’m probably biased because I’m the only one working on this, but I might just get the room done by September.  Maybe.  It will take four (count ‘em – FOUR!!!!!!) coats of white paint to finally kill the hideous corpse blue/mauve on the walls and I’m only up to three.  On two walls.  Because there’s no-one to help shift the frikkin ladder or drop-cloths or the filing cabinet that was totally beyond me.  At the moment, I can’t watch the home improvement shows on TV because I really will punch the living daylights out of the next person who says “It’s just that easy…”