Truth be known to one and all, I am not a fan of painted staircase railings. I’m not. Back in the day when we were building the Big Top, my darling husband and I had a “discussion” about what kind of staircase railing we wanted. He thought the white bannister looked really nice. I was looking at it thinking I had enough cleaning of fingerprints off of door frames and cabinetry. Why would I want more dirty, grimy fingerprints to remove under the Big Top.

I won that “discussion” because I was right. My darling husband told me so after we moved and settled into the Big Top. Of course I was right.

But now we are living under the new Big Top. I think there is only four or six more boxes left to unpack so I guess that, yeah, we are settled which means that it is time that we address some things that need to fixed, improved upon to make this truly the Big Top…like this butt ugly, white painted bannister. This poorly painted white bannister. The landlord tells us that the former tenants painted it…why, he does not know. He hates it and gives me his blessing to do something about it…anything has got to be better than a dirty white bannister. So the darling husband and I have been taking turns scrubbing the filth and grime off…the water was black and the results revealed and even uglier, poorly painted white staircase railing. It’s almost as delightfully ugly as the half-way completed, chalkboard painted walls in fuchsia in the cupboard under the stairs.

Yes, fuchsia.

So the next step is sanding this staircase railing…every single spindle…all 65 of them. It was then I began referring to the former tenant as the rat bastard. Can you blame me?

Sigh.

The goal is for the staircase bannister to look something like this.

Sort of. Kind of. It’s a work in progress and I am determined that it will look so much better once it is done. Up next will be a coat or two of Moon Rise and then Black Suede for the top rail and a coat or two of lacquer. It will definitely look so much better. But in the meantime I need to paint primer on all sixty five of those dang spindles. I tell myself that if I ever see this guy face to face I want to ask him why…what the heck was he thinking…white??! Really??!

It is then, at 10:30 at night our doorbell rings.

What the heck?

It’s the former tenant.

What?

He just happened to be in the neighborhood and was wondering if he could have the 80′s country kitschy bird house planter sitting on the front patio. It’s very special and sentimental to him and his family…which explains why they left it behind three months ago. Uh-huh. We thought it was rather fugly and were happy that the landlord said we could toss it if we wanted to. I guess it was good that we had not yet since the former tenant was standing there on our porch…at ten thirty at night…that must be some special fugly bird house planter. Bill shrugs and tells the guy to take it…please. The guy mutters his thanks, picks it up, loads it into the back of his car and drives away.

And yeah, I forgot to thank the rat bastard.