Today I spent the afternoon cleaning and patching the walls of my bathroom and bedroom in preparation for the primer coat. You learn a hell of a lot about architecture and conservation by doing stuff like fixing your home.

Cleaning the walls, one becomes intimate with the apartment’s imperfections : the crooked wall indicating settling of the house, the holes of bygone nails that used to support artwork of a past tenant , the cracks from the expansion and contraction of the season, the blistering of paint from a hot-water heater.

The putty knife demands specific hand postures. A paint layer will not fill cracks beyond 1/16” and open windows help flush VOCs from the air.