There are three things men will never admit they can’t do well: drive, fight and make love. But I reckon theres a fourth item to add to that list- interior decorating.
I’ve recently taken up DIY during furlough, owing to the amount of jobs around the house that need doing that I’ve never quite gotten around to. I had good reasons for not doing it mind you, sometimes I was too busy, sometimes there was something really good on the TV, but mostly because I hate any kind of unpaid manual labour. However now I had nothing to do for an indefinite period of time, plus I was *sort of* being paid while doing the tasks so I reached for the hammer and screwdrivers and started the really hard job…which was criticising the previous owners handywork.
The only explanation for such poor craftsmanship is that the last occupants left in a hurry, although some of the work is so shoddy and rushed I can only assume the place was on fire. The windows don’t fit properly, the shower leaks, the door frames are more crooked than a mob lawyer. To put the whole place straight would take thousands of pounds, but since we only had a £50 gift card for B&Q that we were given when we moved in, I decided to start by repainting the hall.
Its currently decorated in a ‘Cadaver Grey’ colour and the texture is so rough I think it was applied to the walls using a Weetabix. Obviously I could do better than that and I wasn’t going to let a little thing like having no decorating experience whatsoever stop me. After all, I’d been around painters and decorators a fair bit so I just copied what they did by not showing up for the first two days followed by a day of standing around a lot, sucking air in through my teeth while shaking my head when I looked at things.
The toughest part of decorating however is picking a colour, especially if you’re in a relationship (only a trip to IKEA will put your partnership under more stress). Dulux boast that they have over 2000 colours available and around 1900 of those are some kind of beige. My girlfriend would show me endless swatches and we went back and forth on all kinds of mattes, satins, silks and sheens but we’d always get stuck on picking the right hue. We searched high and low on Pinterest for ideas, looked at all kinds of ‘lifestyle’ blogs, but it turns out the answer was on my Twitter feed all along.
A few weeks ago on there I featured the 91/92 Liverpool away shirt. I discussed how it wasn’t used in many games, how it was the last Candy sponsored shirt and most importantly that it was Liverpool’s first green away. When my partner saw it, inspiration struck. “Why don’t we go for a green like this?”
The rest was history. We’ve picked out a paint called ‘Emerald Glade’, but to you and me will be forever known as ‘Liverpool Away’. So, allow me to save your marriages and take the stress out of decorating by picking out some potential colourways for football kit fans:
Hopefully this should cover all bases and help with your descisions. I can’t help you with the practical side though, you’ll have to figure that out for yourself. Although if you’re a man, you probably think you already know anyway.
Kit For Brains 
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