We are quickly arriving to the June birthday gauntlet in this house. Just one week until Sam turns nine! For this birthday, Sam’s main present is a brand new bed. And not just any bed . . . a handmade, Sam-proof loft bed! Steven is currently fighting with the painting spray machine outside which keeps choking on the primer.
I’ve been painting too, but not beds — my job has been to touch up and repaint the walls in Sam’s room. Nine years of Sam can put a lot of dents in the wall. After I finished spackling all the dents, dings, and outright holes I could find, I realized I would be repainting entire walls.
Nine years was a long time ago, and I had no clue exactly what paint color we had used. Those paint cans were chunked a long time ago. Steven cut some paint chips out of the wall for me (more spackling), and off to Lowe’s I went.
Lowe’s had already started their Memorial Day Extravaganza sale and the paint counter was super busy. Everybody must be in Project Mode. Finally the guy gets to me and I hand him the paint chips. “One quart of each color, eggshell finish, please.”
He looks at my paint chip sample. “Hmm, this looks like flat finish.”
“It’s definitely eggshell; I would never buy flat. It’s nine years old and is showing its age is all.”
“Hmm, well let me scan it in.”
He scanned, and he mixed, and he sampled, and he frowned, then scanned and mixed again. He fiddled with the paint color for 40 minutes, muttered about eggshells, flats, and hues of purple. He finally was satisfied enough to hand the paint over to me. “This is as close as I can get, but I don’t think it’s quite right. I think that paint is flat finish.”
“Oh it’s definitely eggshell,” I reply. Why would I ever buy flat paint? What nerve!
Today was painting day. For those that have forgotten, way back when Sam was only Sputnik, we painted his room dark blue on three walls then a lighter blue on one wall. On the darker blue walls I painted a theme of dinosaurs flying spaceships. Little did I know how close I would hit to all the things he loves.
So I figured I’d start with the dark blue since I would only be doing spot treatments with a brush. Heaven forbid I have to paint over the dinosaurs and spaceships. So splat splat splat I hit all the sparkled places with my newly mixed paint and was met with a disaster. The paint almost matched, but only almost. It was slightly more purple and definitely shinier. Who knew eggshell paint could get so dull over nine years? Hmm.
The light blue colored wall wasn’t as big a deal. The color also did not exactly match but I knew I would be repainting that entire wall. No one would know the wall was originally a slightly different color.
But the splotches on the dark blue wall . . . ugh.
I had a few options:
1. Ignore the splotchiness. It is Sam’s room after all. More holes and dents will follow.
2. Repaint all three dark blue walls, losing the dinosaur spaceships in the process. My heart wasn’t ready for that yet.
3. It’s space themed! What if . . . what if I grabbed a bunch of different colors and kind of sponge painted all around the blotches and make it be like a galaxy? Yeah? Yeah! YEAH!!!
Sam liked option #3, so back down to the basement I went to see what paint we had in stock. I started pulling out cans of paint . . . I had some pink and purple from Lydia’s desk, there was some glossy white trim paint, a good blue color from downstairs, some gray from the downstairs bathroom, and . . . what’s this?
The original cans of paint from Sam’s room. The ones I thought we had chunked years ago.
And guess what.
Flat paint.
I think I owe an apology to the Lowe’s paint guy. Dude knew his paints.