The House Wins Again

I’ve never been to Vegas (nor do I have any desire to do so), but something tells me that if I were a betting woman, it would feel much like home improvements to me.  The latest gamble is paint-related.

On Saturday we headed to Lowe’s to pick up some paint.  We even bought samples and tested them out to make sure that we were buying the right thing.  I had some doubts about the color we picked for the treadmill room (grey-blue), because it looked more grey than I had intended, but it turned out that as it dried, it looked great.  The beige color we picked for the hall and the office also looked great and I couldn’t wait to get it up on the wall.

Before we got the chance to work on the office and hallway, Matt had to replace two fluorescent fixtures in the office.  Both lights had gone completely caput and it’s hard to do a good job painting without light.  He got the new lights installed and we began painting the hall and office.  We then tried for about 8 hours to convince ourselves that the grey/purple tint of the the walls was due to the new lighting and the fact that the ceiling and trim were still an awful dingy, dirty yellow.  It turns out the lighting wasn’t the problem.

Today, my mom and I continued work on the office and hall.  I was working on trim and she was cutting in around the ceiling with the beige paint.  She used up the first can of beige and moved on to the second.  As she was finishing up I came in and noticed that the paint she had used from the second can was a different color than that from the first.  She thought that maybe it was because it was wet and the walls were dry.  I knew in my gut that that wasn’t the case since the second color looked like the sample.  It did not look at all like the prison grey on the rest of the wall.

I began inspecting the two paint cans.  The dots of paint on the two lids are different colors.  I went and got the sample paint can.  I began comparing numbers.  The color name is the same.  The Lowe’s secret paint-mixer numbers are the same.  The “tinter” was different.  The sample and the second paint can are the same (Tinter B).  The first paint can is different (Tinter A).

Matt’s on his way home now so that we can eat dinner and he can go deal with getting a replacement can of paint at the Lowe’s.  If only they could give me a refund on my time.

Update:  We just returned from our 5th visit to Lowe’s in three days.  The first thing we discovered is that the designation “Tinter A” vs. the designation “Tinter B” simply means that the cans were mixed on different machines.  The second thing we learned is that our painting techniques are flawed in about 83 different ways.  The third thing that we learned is that when I say that I think we should bring both the first (incorrectly colored) can of paint and the second (correctly colored) can of paint we should bring both.  The fourth thing we learned is that my eye is rarely wrong.  After getting home and putting both colors up on the wall to confirm that they are, in fact, different colors, Matt is headed to Lowe’s for the 6th trip in 3 days, this time with both cans of paint in tow.

Update #2:  Matt just got back from Lowe’s.  We learned a 5th lesson: machines are sometimes wrong.  What appears to have happened is that the two machines at Lowe’s are calibrated differently.  One is correct.  The other isn’t.  What remains to be seen is whether the paint for the treadmill room was affected as well.  Hopefully if this one’s wrong we’ll catch it before we’re almost finished.

All I wanted was a beige wall.  Now I also want chocolate.