Minnesota Prairie Roots

THIS WEEKEND my husband and I have been marathon painting. We painted our bedroom Friday evening.

And then Saturday we tackled the living room. Get it? Tackle. Football. Super Bowl.

I need to throw some humor into this whole situation. You’ll understand as you continue reading.

Saturday wake-up arrived dark and early at 5:45 a.m. as the 16-year-old had to be up to catch a bus at 6:30 a.m. for a science competition in Rochester. Any thoughts of sleeping in were simply dreams. My husband and I were sleeping on our mattress in the living room, because of the strong paint odor in our bedroom. The living room is directly in the pathway to the kitchen and to the back door. So when our son was up and around, we were too. Besides, he needed a ride to school, although we could have made him walk. But sometimes, according to him, we are actually “nice” parents.

I digress.

Given our early rising, we could have, should have, finished painting early in the day. But we were waiting for our friend, Duane, to arrive. He is a professional painter and had offered to offer some tips on painting the ceiling. The last time my husband painted the ceiling, it looked like a spotted cow and we hired another friend to repaint it. So we were willing to wait for Duane. Between the two of them, Duane and Randy finished the ceiling in an hour. I’m happy to report we do not have Holsteins on our ceiling.

By that time, we were ready for a break from paint fumes and we still needed to pick up the paint for our living room walls. So we drove the several miles across town to get two gallons of Cashmere paint, in a golden “Whole Wheat” color, from Sherwin Williams. With stir sticks, more rollers and additional paint trays in hand and $90 less in our bank account, we were ready to paint.

Or so we thought.

Sherwin Williams' premium Cashmere paint, a satiny paint that we've used before and really like.

After a quick lunch, Randy opened the gallon of paint, only to find specks of color floating on the top. Now, I would have just stirred and stirred the heck out of that paint. But not my smart husband. He slapped on the paint lid, pounded the cover, grabbed the two gallons of paint and drove back, across town, to Sherwin Williams.

I told him I was going to take a nap, but instead called my mom.

When, even after a lengthy conversation with my mom, my husband still wasn’t home, I phoned him. He was at the paint store. Seems all the shaking in the world wouldn’t shake the gold coloring into the white Cashmere paint. Not into the first can of paint. Not into the second can of paint. Not even into a third can of paint, with a different batch number, pulled from the shelf.

Calls to the store manager at home and to the Owatonna Sherwin Williams store got the same answer: “We’ve never had this happen before.” No one could figure it out.

Then the manager suggested trying a different paint, SuperPaint. That worked; the colors mixed into the paint.

Sherwin Williams' SuperPaint, the paint that ended up on our living room walls. I like the look of the paint, but not the chalky-feel finish.

By the time Randy returned home, we knew we would be pushing it to finish painting the living room by dusk.

But we did and I was happy…, until I ran my hand along a newly-painted wall. The dried SuperPaint felt like chalk, a sharp contrast to the glide-smooth finish of the premium Cashmere paint. By then, though, it was too late to do anything. We had already picked up a second gallon of paint for the second coat.

What did I learn from this? Whenever you undertake a home improvement project, something always pops up. I just didn’t think we would have problems with paint, for goodness sakes.

Now, did I tell you about the evening our brand new front door popped open when we were watching TV?

#

(I AM WAITING to see if Sherwin Williams will give us store credit, or a partial refund, for the paint hassles. If they figure out the problem, I would really like to know why the colors wouldn’t mix into the Cashmere paint.)

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling