Recently I worked in my room on removing paintings on walls and ceiling, because of decision that flat I live in will be sold. My first intention was just to remove only some parts and re-paint it with just one color, so it should be easier.
First few days I was just removing little areas and the wall looked really like mess, no structure, colors upon colors layered and I realized that to remove this all will take more effort than I thought before. Than information that flat will be sold came to my attention so I decided to remove it all and put on walls original white color.
As I continued working on removing old paintings, I started to not be satisfied with my work on areas where I worked already. I decided that I will do it clearly and with quality and work systematically to make sure that I will do it properly and that there will be no need to put attention on that parts anymore.
I tried different tools and different approaches to get that sense how to do it most effectively, on places where was only one color the removing process became fast and color gone with ease. On areas with layers of colors the removing became real pain, where centimeter over centimeter required effort and attention and over time my hands became tired and painful.
I also received advise that water should assist with this removing significantly, firstly I was skeptical about this advise but as I tried it so the removing the one layered color on ceiling became fast process.
In few days, I had real hard mess in everything in the room, as I didn’t covered stuff in room, so the dust and colors was literally on everything,
Last day, the morning I woke up, I decided that I am going to finish it because I became little bit pissed off about the mess in my room and that nothing was on its place and moving in my room became problematic, even air has that smell of colors and dust.
So after removing all the color, I re-painted the walls with white and I last just one wall with painting, because this one I like so when it will be really necessary I’ll remove it.
To clear all the dust and clear the mess took several hours, when I finished, I was surprised about myself that I did it. It was like, hard to believe that I finished it and that it is done. But yes, it was done and the order came to my room again.
While completing this, I realized, the process of stopping the mind, removing patterns, systems, is very similar to this. Where self create one layer of fuck up thus it could be really easy to remove, where self layered the bullshit upon bullshit it could be harder and thus it could require more attention and discipline to remove what needs to be removed.
And where self created lot of layers upon layers of the same system, thus to remove this could be real pain and require dedication and maybe all effort needed to remove and see what has not been seen and realized, what is real if just painting and facade is removed.
Thanks, Juraj