Painting story

January of 2009 my life was disrupted by painters. It was such a stressful event that I wasn't able to share it at first. So here is our story, or at least bits of it.

We finally decided to get the whole interior of the house painted. It does look amazing, by the way, and completely changes the feeling of the house. When I see pictures of our house with all white walls it makes me want to barf.

As most of you know having someone in your house working all day is very disruptive to your life. I also made them lunch everyday so that they wouldn't leave and could work as much as possible, because I wanted then OUT OF MY HOUSE. I do not like trying to think of something different to make for lunch everyday. These were very nice men and one nice woman prep worker/cleaner, we will call them Jose, Carlos, and Maria (I really don't remember their names, so I don't know if I'm protecting their identities or not). They worked for my brother-in-law, who is the owner of The Painting Business. My bro-in-law does really amazing work himself, his workers do good enough work. Anyway, I was under an enormous amount of stress having them here everyday. I was also doing most of the prep work, another ploy at getting them out of the house sooner rather than later. The predicted 2 week job ended up taking 4.:(

Out of it we received beautifully colored walls and this one shocking story. One day I had been prepping the basement and then had to leave to go pick up kids from school and take a child for shots, so I was out of the house for a little longer than usual. When I was back home I went downstairs to start working again. As I rounded the corner I discovered in the alcove under the stairs Carlos and Maria totally going at it. He was laying on top of her and... yeah. I AM NOT KIDDING!!! (They did still have clothes on.) I was shocked, totally frozen in shock. Well, they immediately stopped and started apologizing and then asked what I needed. I said I was going to finish the prep work and they assured me they would take care of it. I quickly about faced and walked up the stairs. I was FREAKING OUT!! Kenneth wasn't home yet and I had to get it out of my head by telling someone. I walked across the park to my friend Jenn's house and told her and then waited for the workers to leave my house. I'm a coward. By the way, Maria never came back.

I didn't know what to do. Should I tell my bro-in-law immediately? At this point I was not willing to knowingly cause any lengthening in the process of painting my house. So I chose not to tell until after they were finished. Is that wrong? I did tell my one sister who had just had her house painted by them as well. She told me that she knew that Maria and Carlos liked each other, but Maria was married, but separated. Shocking!

After they were finished I told my bro-in-law. He told me that I should have told him immediately and that he would have made sure the work was finished. I still feel that it was best not to rock the boat at that point. Ending to the story: After the divorce Maria and Carlos started dating legitimately. Maria found out she was pregnant and they soon after were married. Just to think, I was able to witness one of the dry runs for the making of said baby. Lucky me.