Busy Saturday

[ksmith]

Today began with a vet visit. King, for his Adequan shot, and Gaby for a physical exam and annual vax. Herself was so patient–she licked the vet’s face during the exam, and didn’t flinch when she got her shots.

As for King, vet and I talked. At the end of the month, we’ll retest his liver function to see if there’s any improvement. In three months, we’ll redo the ultrasound to check that &^%$# spot on his spleen. Fingers already crossed that it stays the same size or even maybe hey disappears.

Home stuff. I’m having some repair work done on the garage this week–new side door, siding replaced–which means that I needed to buy paint. The house was painted way back in 2001, and I recalled that the painter had left extra paint behind. I didn’t think I still had it given that I had actually cleaned out the garage a couple of times over the years, but I hunted around and found three full gallons of exterior acrylic low-lustre on a bottom shelf. Unfortunately, 1) they were only the main color, not the trim, and 2) paint that has been sitting in a garage for 11 years is paint that is well past its sell-by date.

The paint brand wasn’t one I had ever seen before. I hunted for it online, and wasn’t all that surprised to find that it no longer existed. Not only that, but the paint store that had mixed the stuff closed this past spring. I managed to chip bits of both colors off the siding and door, and went to one hardware big box to see if they could color match. Got a perfect match for the trim color, but not for the main shade–do you have any idea how many shades of cream/off-white there are out there? And “low-lustre”–what the hell is that? It’s a bit glossier than “eggshell,” which is in turn a bit glossier than flat. Neither, however, is as glossy as satin, which in turn is not as glossy as semi-gloss. Of course, it depends on the brand, because some paints have low-lustre but not eggshell, while others have low-lustre and eggshell, while still others don’t have either but go straight from flat to satin to semi-gloss.

So, after three failed attempts to mix the right shade of off-white, I came home. Peeled another paint chip off the garage, then searched around for a paint brand that had a low-lustre finish. Found one. Went to big box that sold that brand. Perfect match.

The garage needs repair–the siding is flaking and the door veneer is peeling off. I’m glad it’s getting done, but it has inspired thoughts of repairs that I would actually enjoy. Like a bathroom revamp. Or new countertops and backsplash in the kitchen. Refinished cupboards.

Rained today. Three-tenths of an inch. We needed it.

Mirrored from Kristine Smith.

Comments

[threeoutside.livejournal.com]

I have a paint story. Years ago, my (late) hubby decided we needed a shed out in the back yard to hold yard stuff. So, he bought one and hired a guy to put it together. Then it needed to be painted. He picked out the paint colors.

Sometimes my hubby baffled me, he really did.

This was it. (http://tiny.cc/37rkiw)

It was hideous. It was appalling. It triggered one of the three worst fights we ever had in our marriage. But by God, he got his way. And our lovely Cape Cod pale green-yellow home got stuck with this *wart* in the back yard.

Four years after he died, I decided I could handle changing its color. I wanted it to match the house, naturally. So I got a chip of the siding (tree branch hit a corner, I guess) and took it to Home Depot where their color spectrograph analyzed it and I went home with a gallon of paint. I tried it on a piece of scrap lumber let it dry, and held it up to the siding by the garage. If there was any difference between the two, *I* couldn't see it. *Perfect*.

So I paid my nephew to come over and paint it. (http://tiny.cc/iaskiw)

And when he'd finished, and the paint had dried, I went out and looked at it, and it was a totally different color than the house. I looked from the shed to the house, the house to the shed, and there was no mistaking it. It was about as pale as the house color but it was definitely less green and more yellow. WTF????

Maybe you've guessed: The garage faces south, the side of the house that gets hammered by the sun. The back of the house, against which I was visually comparing the shed color, is *always* shaded. The siding in the front of the house had faded over the years.

However, the shed stands far enough away it's not noticeable to anyone but me, it's not like I have troops of people marching through my back yard all the time. And ANYTHING would have been better than what it was before.

Boiling this down: you might want to take into account what the sun has done to the old paint job...

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

My dad had similar tastes in vibrant color. I will never forget the shades of semi-gloss we used when we painted the interior of our house in Florida. Old gold. Deep sky blue. Deep lilac. The thing is, they don't sound bad given some of the colors one sees now, but the problem is that they were semi-gloss. A matte lilac wall is one thing. A shiny lilac wall is something else.

I admit I helped pick out the color, but I think being in high school is sufficient excuse for a lack of color sense.

The garage samples that I used don't get as pounded as some areas of the house. In fact, the handyman will be replacing some wood on the west side of the house, which takes a pounding from the sun. It's possible that the trim color on the new wood may come out a bit darker, but I am hoping that a year or two of weathering tones it down...assuming I don't have the whole place repainted before then.