Sunday, December 19, 2010

Painting Tip

Last Summer, while getting the house ready to transfer to the new owners, I ran into a problem with paint. As usual, I had been somewhat lazy in labeling my paint cans previously that year when I painted several rooms various shades of light to medium brown while I was in my frenzied search for the "perfect" shade of brown.

The guest bathroom was a medium shade of brown and behind a picture I had made several ugly attempts to hang the picture. Well, I went out to the cabinet that had many cans of light to medium brown paint (both gallon, quart, samples and pints), and searched for the one that matched the guest bath. Each time I thought I'd found the right shade and went and painted the spot, but alas, not so! The mismatched spot got bigger and bigger each time I tried to cover it.

Finally, I gave up and decided I would either have to paint 2 walls of the bathroom or just leave the mess and try to hide it with the picture. Like all good slackers, to avoid making a decision I got down on the floor to clean it really well and happily discovered a quarter-size paint blob behind the door.
"Thank God I'm a sloppy painter" was all I could think!



I hurried down to Home Depot and handed the paint blob to the clerk at the paint desk. He put it into their computerized paint-matching machine and out came a sample of perfectly matched paint. YAY!



You just need a quarter-size sample to get paint matched.



Too bad it isn't that easy to correct my "too-blonde" hair color I ended up with last time I was brave enough to let the beauty shop do it.



I'll have to think up how I'm going to correct that coloring, but first I need to relax a little.



In a perfect world, I would do the following to keep track of the paint in each room:

* Stick a free paint stiring stick in the can to coat the bottom of the stick
* Let it dry, then write the name of the room on the stick in permanent ink
* Put a hole in the end of each stick and string them on a key chain

It will help if you remember where you put them, but that's a whole 'nother story.

7 comments:

  1. I think your blonde hair looks very nice.
    I had a time with paint when I was getting my house ready to sell.

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  2. I like your hair color!!
    Good thoughts about paint color. The house that we moved out of 3 years ago had to have the trim painted--I gave the painter what I 'thought' matched the trim on the other side that had already been painted. I was wrong, but no one noticed and my husband and I laughed about it...I think it's still that way and I wonder if the owners know...

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  3. I read a tip online that suggested keeping the paint chip you use and taping it to the inside of the light switch plate for that room. I thought that was a pretty smart suggestion, as you know the swatch will stay in the room and you're going to have the plate off the wall anyway for painting purposes.

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  4. Oh that is too funny! I could visualize the 'spot' growing with the wrong colors lol. My hubby asked me once why I labeled the can 'white'. Oxymoron? That hair color looks beautiful! Now you look way younger than me!
    Love the pic of the rest mode ;-)

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  5. This story makes all us sloppy painters feel better. One day I too will ditch all the unneeded extra paint and figure out what's what. Until then, thanks for the laugh!

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  6. Toodie, I like that you can see how the mess got worse and worse! And the picture made the hair look way better than it was. I've cut it shorter and decided to let the gray grow in and just go back to highlighting it myself.

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  7. I hope you and hubby and mother inlaw are all feeling better. I'm thinkin of ya and in my prayers too. Let's pray the new year will be extraordinary.

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