Five minutes. All it took in total was five minutes and I had been putting it off for at least five months. How did I get it done?
We painted the master bath four and a half years ago and, for some reason, the paint chipped away in a couple of spots by the light switch, by where I hang my bath towel, and the edges of a half wall. It bothered me. My husband, who is quite colorblind always claimed not to notice that there were these little white patches in our otherwise light taupe bathroom. Convenient, right?
I kept telling myself, well, the paint is in the garage. Go get the paint and you can just use one of your little sponge craft paint brushes. It won’t take you long to get it done. But, for some reason that trek to the garage just seem to be overwhelming. I saw these chips every day and I would think “OK VJ, you have to go take care of that. Easy-to-do. You know you can do it. You know hubby is never going to do it”. Hubby almost faints at the very thought of having to paint something, but I enjoy painting. I find it repetitive and calming and quiet.
What prompted me to get it done now and in just 5 minutes? We had three carriage lights installed to line the driveway so that when we drive in at night the driveway is lit up and we don’t feel like we’re driving into a forest. In order to install the lights and not chip into the stucco and have to drill through wall studs and framing and all that stuff, the contractor ran the conduit on the outside of the wall. Nice aluminum conduit running the length of the side of our house. He commented that if I could find the paint that matched the exterior he would paint the conduit and it would be less noticeable. OK. Sounds good.
We have a paint cabinet in the where we keep the ends of the paint that painters have used, along with wrong colors and spray paints and everything else that we’ve used over the years. I had looked there at one time trying to find the bathroom paint because I’m the one who labels a paint after it’s done, using a large marker and titles such as “master bath”, “half bath near laundry room”, “guest bedroom next to the garage”, and I had looked through the paint and I could not find it. Well, OK, so maybe that’s one of the reasons I put it off, but it had to be there. I knew it was there. On Thursday morning my husband told me that the contractor would be finishing the conduit work today and would I please find the matching exterior paint for him so he could paint the conduit.
I went into the garage and I looked on the bottom shelf and lo and behold, way in the back, was the paint with the store label and my writing on the top that said “exterior paint”. Yeah! I gave it to the contractor. Done.
I thought to myself that I should look for that bathroom paint again. I walked back into the garage and at eye level on another shelf I see two one-gallon paint cans I had not noticed. I take the top one down and it says “master bathroom”. Yippee! It feels about 1/4 full. I go into the house, into my craft room, find one of the one inch wide sponge brushes. I take the paint to the bathroom, pop the lid off with a screwdriver, dab the brush into the paint, go to the empty spots that have chipped away on the wall, and lightly brush on the new color, carefully feathering the edges. The color looks too light, but paint dries darker. Doesn’t it? I cleaned the brush and secured the lid on the paint. Returning in twenty minutes there it is. A perfect match. TA-DA!
Altogether it probably took just five minutes. Five lousy, stupid, minutes and yet, every morning and every night and sometimes a couple of times during midday I had gone into that bathroom and seeing the paint worn away or chipped and thought “you need to fix that, why aren’t you fixing that, you should fix that”.
Can you relate? Can anybody relate? I hope so. Do tell!
Every Day Is A Good Day
VJ
everydaywithvj 