I hear Halloween's coming up.
I don't think my house is haunted, but getting it ready to be on the market has been a little scary.
I mean, few things are more frightening than doing several home improvement tasks which require skills and knowledge I'm fairly confident I do not actually possess.
Like learning there is quite a difference between flat and eggshell.
Good thing Lowe's does refunds for paint.
*sung in the State Farm jingle*
Like a homeowner, always at Lowe's!
So let me tell a little story to you.
Once upon a time, there was a room.
It was blue. An aqua blue.
There were some chips in the blue
Where the white was coming through.
Only a few spots; not obvious or in plain view.
But I got caught up in the ol' attitude of CAN DO
And decided touching up the holes is what I'd do.
We had some old paint, including some of the blue.
There was only one can, not two.
I stirred the paint, and it matched the hue.
So I slapped it on the wall, thinking it'd look good as new.
But it went on darker; that should've been the first clue
That it wouldn't dry to match and I was screwed.
I should've stopped there, but no, I refused.
So I kept on painting with the old aqua blue.
Making it worse than an ugly tattoo.
Long story short, I guess I used bad paint and it didn't match. The aqua blue that was on the can is a custom color of mixed paint and they don't sell it anymore, so we went and got a paint sample of something that looks similar and now I'm all up in the throws trying to fix my initial disaster.
I should've never have messed with it.
Me: If these walls could talk...
Mike: They would scream.
Now I may have to repaint the whole room.
Or just the wall?
Maybe that's how accent walls became a thing.
Plebian painter who also happens to be foreign: "So I messed up and just painted the whole wall that one color to cover it up, but now we're out of paint and it's a custom color so we can't get more to match so we just have to kind of leave it."
Budget savvy real estate investor: "I like it. And I like your accent. We'll call it...an ACCENT wall!"
Could be a true story?
And how about the first two roofing companies I called today for some minor roof repair were like, "Yeah, um, okay, but we're booked for two months straight and are not able to accept your job right now."
!?!?!?!?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!
We haven't even had a hurricane! What are you guys so busy DOING?
But perhaps I should not be so quick to criticize those with actual house skills.
Allow me to tell you one more tale of our ineptitude.
Years ago the drain in the sink in our bathroom downstairs suddenly stopped being able to hold itself up. You'd go to wash your hands, and the sink would just fill up because it was always plugged.
Afraid that we were going to have to call some plumber or pay a lot to have such a minor inconvenience fixed, we decided to look for alternative solutions.
That is, less expensive solutions.
Mike wedged a penny between the stop and the drain. The penny held the stop up so that the water would then flow freely.
We could've used a dime, but I thought- why pay 10 times more for the same thing!?
We don't need to SINK that much into it!
LOOOOOOOOOL
True story. We had it like that for years. That's some serious ROI right there.
But just recently Mike fixed it for real and didn't need to go buy anything for it.
#manstuff
Mike informed me that the penny had slid to a precarious angle, and when removing it, he came close to losing it.
That would've been money down the drain.
But over the years of being in the sink, the penny had acquired some grime and gunk. I washed it before putting it back in our coin jar. I hope that's not considered money laundering.
One more for the records:
Me: I think pressure washing dude killed my mint.
Mike: Oh no!
Me: Yeah, but it was pretty much unavoidable because it was right by the house. I would've had to, like, dug it up and moved it.
Mike: I guess it wasn't mint to be.
My hair smells like hard work and scrubbing bubbles that didn't scrub as hard as I had to,
TWS
