What. A. Project. [ No need to comment ]

This. Has. Gone. On. For. Days.
Seemingly such a straightforward project. (Is there such a thing?) Touch-up painting in the foyer. You know, the space people see first when they walk into a home. It’s all banged up with some serious gouges and dings, especially on corners.

We had good luck with three previous color-matching projects last year (one for us and two for Grace & Neal), so I took a sample to a-store-that-shall-not-be-named. Terrible match.

Took it back and they scanned the sample again. Another unacceptable match.

So now I’ve said, “Screw it!” and have taken a sample from smack in the middle of the wall. The nail above the naked square correctly suggests that we have something hanging on the wall, so if I can’t patch-and-paint the area very well, it will be hidden by us and probably the next owners, too. Clare is taking the sample to a different paint store.

The unused $15 quart of paint from the second scan? Clare is going to paint the inside of the coat closet.

We couldn’t just paint the whole foyer because it goes up the stairs and continues all along the upstairs hallway and I don’t have the ladders or tools for two-story painting. Hire it out? We’ve never been completely happy with any job that “professionals” do. As Clare’s baby brother says, “’Professional’ just means they get paid to do it. It doesn’t [necessarily] mean they’re particularly good.” Their objective is to finish, collect their check, and move on to the next job.

[ PXL_20240501_164125033_8x8tm :: cell phone ]

[Corinne C]

A fun image matching your narrative.

[Mags]

I can't imagine anyone matching the color exactly, but what do I know?! You do well at anything you take on, Thom.

[Thom Mitchell]

@marlboromaam The third scan was a charm. Well. Sort of. I should have added to the narrative that this is a two-story space and it goes up the stairs and down the hallway, so there are limited opportunities for “stopping.”
See https://365project.org/rhoing/365/2011-07-22
What we ended up doing was painting the triangular space behind the ladder in the 2011 post, the adjacent “trapezoidal” wall (from which the sample was taken!), patching and painting corners where it’s hard to see the subtle color difference from the third color-match. The end result? “Good enough.”
As always: “Don’t let perfection be the enemy of excellence”!

[Mags]

@rhoing Ha ha! I like that saying. I used to be a perfectionist, but not anymore.