So as I might have mentioned, John and I have been redoing a bathroom in our house. It is almost done, it looks awesome, and I must begrudgingly admit that I’m glad we did it now, as hectic as it has made the past couple of weeks.
But now that we’re at the tail end of the project, I am teetering on the edge of full-on hysteria about the state of our house. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is dust on every surface of our first floor. Every single thing is coated in a fine layer of tasteful gray tile powder. There are stacks of cardboard boxes that once held the new sink and toilet and tile and faucets just hanging out in our living room. They, too, are dusty. We have had kraft paper taped to the floor for weeks for folks to walk on, and it’s all raggedy and torn and the tape is peeling and….well. It makes me want to clean, is what it makes me want to do. Except there are certain practical limitations at work there- namely, the work is not yet quiiiite done, and so cleaning now would be silly and futile. But- the dust! It taunts me!
I am worn a little thin, is what I’m saying. Which might explain the rather shrill reaction I had to the following story:
As long as we had contractors coming out to the house to do the bathroom, we asked them to bid out a couple of smaller projects in the house. One is the floor of our basement. Right around New Years, we had about 7 inches of snow melt in one day, followed by two days of pretty heavy rain. Toward the end of this literal deluge, I walked down into the basement and noticed that as I stepped onto the (carpeted) basement floor at the bottom of the steps, my sock came up…damp.
Well, shit.
So we pulled back the carpet, very, very afraid of what we might find.
Turns out, it’s not so bad. The foundation had become saturated with all the melt and rain, and the concrete was slightly damp in the lowest place. Because it had carpet on top of it, there was no way for it to dry, and the carpet pad just soaked it up. We turned on the fan and it was dry in an hour.
But the fact remained: this was likely going to happen again. There are drainage pipes and tiles in the basement, so it’s all kosher and not leaking or flooding, but big snow melts happen. Major rainstorms too. The foundation is going to get wet again, and we didn’t want to have to walk with trepidation every spring. Plus, the lowest point of the foundation happens to be directly next to the utility sink, and across from the furnace. This is hardly space that needs to be carpeted.
So we decided to pull out the carpet in the “utility” part of the basement, and keep only the “rec room” part of the basement (which, mercifully, seems high and dry) carpeted. We asked the contractor to smooth over the concrete and put down basement paint.
Easy, right?
Well, on day 2 of our project, our fabulous contractor said he would bring over some color samples for the basement paint, for us to pick one.
“Fabulous,” we thought. There can only be, what, 12 or 15 colors of this basement paint stuff? We’ll just choose the taupe-iest one, to match the carpet, and be good to go.”
Oh, how foolish we were. Fabulous contractor proceeded to bring us the ENTIRE BENJAMIN MOORE COLOR DECK. Apparently you can make basement paint any color! The world was our oyster! There were literally HUNDREDS of taupes to choose from.
At about 11:30 p.m. one night a few days later, John decided it was time to Get Serious about choosing a basement paint color. I was tired, I was grouchy, and I gave him 5 minutes to devote to this project.
We went downstairs with the deck of colors, and started holding up various taupes against the carpet, looking for a nice neutral match. SO. MANY. TAUPES. But we knew what we wanted. We just wanted it to look like this:
We evaluated the dozens of nearly-identical taupes for the alloted five minutes, chose the closest match, and went to bed.
Well, they finally painted the basement floor yesterday. It did not go entirely according to plan.
John tried to warn me via email.
“It’s not quite what I expected,” he said. “But it’s totally fine.”
The man LIES, my friends. It is NOT TOTALLY FINE:
IT IS PUKEY MUSTARD YELLOW. I have no idea how this happened. The chip looked taupe. The paint that is splashed on the sides of the can looks taupe! But somehow, when it is put down on the floor, it manages to turn into a weird beige-ish yellow that clashes with (a) the carpet, (b) the stairs, and (c) the walls. Is clashing trifecta!
“We can buy some little throw rugs to put over it!” John said, helpfully. “In a few years, we can repaint it!”
THROW RUGS, he says. It is possible that I did not react entirely cheerfully to this suggestion. There may have been swear words.
And then he says something very interesting:
“The contractor offered to redo it for free.”
Um, what?
“See these wrinkles and uneven patches in the concrete? They’re not supposed to be there, and they couldn’t really see them until they painted the floor, and at that point it was too late. So he said he would come back and redo it for free in a few weeks when he finishes this other job he’s doing.”
Now here’s the thing: were the floor actually the color we wanted, I probably would just say “eh, live with it, no big deal” about the wrinkles. But the floor is MUSTARD YELLOW, you guys. BABY POOP COLORED. There are not enough throw rugs in the world.
So my quandary is this: am I a terrible person if I take the contractor up on his offer to redo it to fix the wrinkles, not because I particularly care about the wrinkles (though, all things considered, I prefer they not be there,) but because I want to change the paint color?
And, more importantly: is anyone available to come help us choose the correct taupe this time? Because clearly we suck at this.
