Flashback

When we lived in our first two houses, I spent a ton of time at the hardware store.  There were two reasons for this.

• First, both of those houses always seemed to have something that needed to be repaired.  Invariably, we didn't have the parts or tools that were needed to do the job.  That meant it was pretty much impossible to get a job done without a trip to the  hardware store.
• Second, I was born without the handyman gene.  That meant that I usually misdiagnosed the problem at least once and had to make multiple trips to the hardware store to complete the job.

When we moved to a new house twelve years ago, my trips to the hardware store started to dwindle.  There were fewer new projects to complete and fewer repair jobs to tackle.  Plus, I'd acquired a (very) modest level of competence around the house and, when a job needed to be done, the need for multiple trips to the hardware store to get a single job done almost disappeared. 

So, when I started my little paint repair job yesterday afternoon, I had hardly given it any thought.  During Hurricane Sandy, we'd had a little water damage on our kitchen ceiling.  Considering the damage that the storm did to others on the East Coast, the impact on us was pretty darn small.  The water stain was about two feet long and varied in width from about one-half inch to about two inches.  I stared at it each day for the past few weeks and, finally, with college football season over, I had a free Saturday afternoon.  I figured the job would take all of 10 minutes.  That was a bit of an underestimation.

I found an old can of paint in the basement labeled "master bathroom ceiling."  I took a look at the master bathroom ceiling, glanced at the kitchen ceiling, and said "Those look the same to me."  I opened the can, mixed the paint, poured a little into the rolling pan, and took out my smallest roller.  I coated the roller with the paint, climbed up my step ladder, and began to roll.  What a mistake!  I now had a six-inch long stripe of bright white paint in the middle of my kitchen ceiling and the rest of that ceiling was definitely not bright white.  This was a flashback to my home repair adventures from the 1990's.

Now, I had a real problem on my hands.  As bad as the water stain looked, the water stain combined with six-inch white stripe looked even worse.  It was at this point, of course, that Kim found some of our old paperwork from the builder that identified the ceiling paint by name.  It was Duron Ceiling White.  I put on my shoes and headed off to the Duron store to pick up a quart.  Of course, when I got there, the crack staff at the counter promptly informed me that Duron doesn't make that color any more and the only way to get a match would be for me to bring them in a sample.  "Does that mean I need to cut a little square out of the ceiling dryall," I asked?  "That's right," I was told.

So, it was back in the car for the drive back home.  Once I got there, I pulled out a razor, climbed up the step ladder again, and prepared to cut a hole in the ceiling.  "Umm, don't you think it might be smarter to take a piece out of the ceiling somewhere a little less obvious than the middle of the room," Kim asked?  Of course, she was right.  So, I headed over to the coat closet and scratched away for a few minutes until I finally had a thumbnail-sized piece of the ceiling.

From there, it was back to the paint store to get my suggested match (it was "Antique White"), another drive home, and -- finally -- success.  Now, when you look at the kitchen ceiling, instead of a water stain, you see some slightly mismatched paint.  It's a classic repair job by Mike.  That means it took longer than it should have and it's not perfect.  I love it.