Happy New Year! After more than two years of planning, this is it—2017, the year I retire and move back east. When I start feeling overwhelmed, I remind myself to just focus right now on selling the condo. I am really scrambling to complete the bare minimum to-dos before listing in early March.
A couple things I’ve learned:
- The longer I procrastinate with home maintenance, the more I escalate the issue. Working through the to-do list, I have also been working through my worries.
- If the food disposal is not used regularly, it will corrode and need to be replaced.
At least one task became a fun challenge.
When I had new patio doors installed in 2014, I removed the hardware for the original blinds, leaving three white patches on the green walls in my bedroom and dining room. The previous owners had left the outdoor storage closet full of paint cans so I rummaged around, found a can of green paint, painted over one patch in the dining room and … created a much darker green patch. I remember MF at that time commenting that usually a less conspicuous spot is chosen to test a paint coloUr. That was noted and I left the wall as is until two days ago.
But before painting the entire walls with new paint, first I wanted to try painting only the patches (if I could determine the green coloUr used) to see if that was good enough. Over the holidays, I cleaned out and organized the storage closet—including getting numbers from all the rusting paint cans.
I know some of you are thinking “pick a similar coloUr and paint the whole damn wall (or room).” Hang in there.
Searching online, the numbers did not match any of the coloUr charts for the two brands used. Then I tried a mysterious word written on one of the cans: FESCUE. I learned fescue is a type of grass and a greenish Devine brand paint coloUr. I picked up a sample card, it looked like a match for the bedroom, I bought a quart, painted the patches and … victory!
But the dining room is a slightly different green. I went to a store that sells the other brand used and a helpful man deciphered the numbers from the photo on my phone of that brand’s old can of greenish paint. In my enthusiasm, he was already mixing me a quart when I remembered I was only planning to pick up a sample card and I realized I might just be buying another quart of a Fescue equivalent. They looked the same to me, but I painted one patch and it matched. Another win!
The walls look great! For two coats on two walls (plus a third coat over that dark green mishap, teehee), implementation took no more than 15 minutes. For me, this was about not doing unnecessary laboUr, saving $ and the satisfaction of some conclusive detective work both online and off. Now for the next item on that to-do list …
References and related links:
- MF: manfriend
- previous post: home improvement
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