The Vile Showerhead (or, Finding the Dread-Free Life)

Posted on January 5, 2012August 6, 2019

I’m a “dreader”. That’s not a word–I know that. But that doesn’t change the truth: I dread things. On a regular basis.

For example, I re-decorated my bathroom about a year ago. I put wood planking on the walls, hung some wallpaper, stained and varnished new trim, installed a new (bowed) shower rod and new curtain and finally, to finish the whole thing off, I installed a new shower head.

Which was the biggest mistake I made.

See, right after installing it, my wife marched right in, closed the door and proceeded to take a 45-minute shower. When she was done, the kids all marched through, one after the other.

When the shower marathon ended that day, I opened the bathroom door and it was as if a cloud had localized in that tiny room. I literally couldn’t see the other side through the steam. The little ceiling fan was working overtime, but there was no way it could keep up.

“Fortunately,” I thought, trying to wave away the steam, “this is something that won’t happen everyday. Once the ‘newness’ of the shower head wears off, we’ll go back to having to fight the kids to take baths.”

Nope. Not a chance. Every single day since the installation of that vile shower head, our bathroom is engulfed in steam. Shower after shower, hour after hour: steam, steam, steam.

Well, that went on for a long time and then the inevitable happened: the mold started growing around the edges of the ceiling. The wallpaper started peeling and curling up on all the seams. My beautiful bathroom had gone from a place of despair to a place of beauty and then back again to a place of despair all in about 6 months time. It was depressing to say the least.

And that’s where the “dreading” comes in. Everyday, I’d look at the ceiling and see the mold or the wallpaper and see the peeling and I’d dread the “fix-up” job that was to come.

I dreaded it because it seemed like such a big job: fixing the mold, fixing the paper, repainting the ceiling. I’d just gone through some of this work and now, thanks to that dumb shower head, I had an even bigger mess to fix.

And so I stared at it for a long time. I thought about it. I tried to ignore it. But most of all I dreaded it.

Until finally I got so sick of being depressed and frustrated about it that I actually fixed it.

I took a week and on a Monday night, I sprayed the mold with a bleach solution and scrubbed the ceiling. That took me exactly 17 minutes.

Two nights later I came back with more bleach–no scrubbing this time, just the bleach on the mold. That took about 7 minutes.

On Friday night I went around the room and primed all the previously moldy spots with ProFlo Alkyd primer and then I re-pasted all the peeling paper. That night’s work took about 15 minutes.

Finally on Saturday, I got ready to paint the ceiling and finish the job. I was ready for a big, painstaking job (I hate painting ceilings) but I was surprised to find that the whole thing took about an hour from the time I opened the can of paint to the time I put the paint back on the shelf in the workroom.

In the end, I realized that the job I’d dreaded for the last 6 months or more had taken me less than two total hours to fix. In my mind, I’d exaggerated and inflated and imagined the work to be 10x worse than it was. I imagined the mess, the problems to be 10x less fixable than they were. I imagined the pain to be 10x greater than it was.

I’d spent 6 months feeling bad and frustrated and almost (in a sad and pathetic way) depressed about a room that took me less than 2 hours to fix.

So how does this apply to you? Well, I can’t speak for you, but I’ve talked to many folks in the paint store at RepcoLite who feel the same way I was feeling. They’re frustrated about the seemingly endless amounts of work needed in their homes. They look at the jobs and the work to be done and assume that they’re worse than they really are. And so they do what I did: they put them off and they stew on them, thinking about them and mulling them over in their minds for months until the jobs seem even bigger and more horrible. In short, we dread them and waste our time worrying about them and frowning over them.

But what we really should be doing is “doing” them. The jobs aren’t as bad as we think. They’ll go smoother. They’ll go more quickly. They won’t be as painful. And best of all, once we’re done, you’ll notice what I noticed: a real sense of relief and freedom from the work that had been hanging over my head.

So, bottom line: If you’ve got a project that’s creating that feeling of dread, jump into it. Get it accomplished. And then kick back and enjoy the dread-free life…

The Least Flashy Job in Every Paint Project: Wall Washing

Posted on November 21, 2011August 6, 2019

Not too long ago, the kids helped me do the dishes. That’s cool right? I mean really, you walk into the kitchen after dinner expecting to take on the job and you find 2 or 3 kids there already working, placing all the freshly washed and dried dishes on the counter for my wife or I to put them away. Yes, there’s no way around it: that’s cool.

Unfortunately, there was a problem. Being kids, they’d never thought to clean off the counter. It was still covered with the mess of making dinner–the chunks of hamburger, drops of grease, some lettuce parts, some spilled ketchup . . . all that stuff–the things we’d normally wipe off from the counter BEFORE we piled dishes up on top of it.

They put in all the work, but because they hadn’t thought about the counter, some of the work was wasted and had to be redone. OK–now, for the paint point. See, we run into this all the time at RepcoLite–oh, not with counters and dishes, but with walls and paint.

For example, not too long ago, a customer walked into the store frustrated because his new paint wasn’t bonding well to his walls. He explained that there were places–especially on his wood panelling–where it wasn’t sticking well and he wanted to know what was wrong with the paint.

Turns out, there wasn’t anything wrong with the paint. The problem, as became clear in the conversation that followed, was that he had never washed the paneling down before painting. Over the years, he had cleaned it with Endust or some other dusting spray and the waxes in those cleaning agents can remain on the surface for years and will often repel a latex paint.

That’s just one scenario of the many that happen daily. Remember, nobody washes dishes and then sets them down on a dirty, unwiped counter. Likewise, we shouldn’t spend all the time and energy and money involved in a paint project only to roll our new paint over unprepared surfaces.

Take some time the night before your intended project to give the walls a good washing. It’s not a flashy, exciting part of a paint project. It’s one of those things that we tend to ignore or skip. But it’s important! Remember, even if the walls look clean–you don’t see spiderwebs or dirt or dust or other goo stuck there by your kids–take the time to wash over them with TSP. You’ll be giving yourself a clean palette, a clean foundation to work on and you’ll be much less likely to encounter problems in your project.

Decorating Made Easy: Decorating with the 60-30-10 Rule

Posted on September 7, 2011August 6, 2019

The 60-30-10 rule is a tested concept used by interior decorators everywhere. It’s a simple proportion that spells out the ideal amounts of color to use in your decorating.

To keep it as simple as possible, 60% of your room should be composed of your dominant color, 30% should be composed of a secondary color and that final 10% should be reserved for accents. Now, maybe that sounds a little confusing . . . so here are some examples:

This room is a perfect example of the 60-30-10 rule in practice.
60% = Lavendar (walls and blanket)
30% = White (bed and fireplace)
10% = brown/tan (chairs, dresser, floor)

Another great example:
60% = Tan (walls, floors) 30% Brown (couch, tables)
10% Blue and White (pillows, vases, etc.)

A classic example showing that you don’t need a soft, muted color on your walls to make this work.
60% = Red (walls, accessories)
30% = Cream (furniture, rug)
10% = Tan (floor, accessories)

Another great example that clearly demonstrates that the main color doesn’t need to be calm, simple, neutral or BORING!
60% = Green (walls, accessories)
30% = White (furniture, art prints)
10% = Dark Brown (floors, chair legs)

An example that proves you can use the 60-30-10 rule to work incredibly vibrant and bold colors smoothly into your decorating.
60% = Blue (walls, light)
30% = Pink (bedspread, chair, painted leaves)
10% = White (trim, doors)

The color options are endless and it’s not difficult to see that using this rule helps you keep your color scheme under control and helps you produce an end result that’s very focused, very clean and very inviting!

Bad Uniforms and What They Teach Us About Paint

Posted on August 2, 2011August 6, 2019

The year was 1976. The team was the Chicago White Sox. The Sport? Major League Baseball. Yes. Major League Baseball.

Maybe some of you remember this, maybe this is new to many of you, but for 3 games in 1976, the White Sox sent their players out on the field wearing…yes, shorts. And not cool, baggy shorts. No. Tight, clingy shorts. With their socks pulled up all the way to their knees.

This alone would have been bad–a fashion faux-pas of epic proportions–but the designers of this sleek little number weren’t done. They added to the shorts what would have been a boring white shirt were it not for the GI-NORMOUS 1970’s black collar.

Together, the whole outfit was so horrible, I’m pretty sure opposing teams refused to even take the field against the White Sox. White Sox players themselves likely spent hours in counseling and therapy sessions after being ridiculed and laughed into oblivion by former fans.

And yet, what’s interesting to me is that underneath that ridiculous outfit, these men were still Major League Baseball players. They are/were more successful than me by a long shot and yet, looking at the pictures, it’s almost impossible to think of them that way.

It’s a perfect example of that old saying about how the clothes make the man (or, of course, woman). When we say that, we know that clothes don’t CHANGE who we are, but they certainly affect how we are perceived.

For example, think of the manliest man playing the game today–I’m not going to name names, you just get somebody in your mind. Picture that player and then dress him–in your mind–in this bozo outfit from the 1970s. Give him shorts and white socks with black stripes pulled up to his ankles. Put that little shirt on him with the big fluffy disco collar. I guarantee if you do that, you’ll be unable to take him seriously. The goofy get-up doesn’t change who he is, but it certainly changes who we think him to be.

Now let’s shift gears and talk about paint.

Your home–your living room, your kitchen, the exterior of your home itself–can be in great shape. It can be solid, well-built, brand-new. It can be composed of the highest quality materials and consist of the best workmanship known to mankind. It can be all of those things, but if the paint colors are boring or were poorly chosen, all of the quality underneath remains hidden.

Look again at the pitcher in the top picture. He may be a tremendous athlete (and even if he wasn’t, he’s still likely 20X more fit than most of us). And yet, even though that may all be true, he looks so silly in his little shorts and his big collar and pulled-up socks that I look more manly sitting here typing this story about paint colors than he does throwing curveballs and 4-seam fastballs.

As I said earlier, clothes MAKE the man–they alter our perceptions–and the same is true with your home. You can take the best, highest quality workmanship and hide all that quality beneath poor paint jobs and lousy color choices.

It’s a remarkable concept: an athlete takes years and years of sweat and work and effort to hone him or herself to be the best he or she can be in their sport. Just like those White Sox players. And yet, all that work can be tossed out in a minute when you cover them over with a stupid-looking uniform. You can spend hours and hours and tons of money making your home exactly the way you want it, but if you choose the wrong paint color–something that simple and that superficial–the rest of the work is cheapened.

So all that to say, choose wisely. Color matters. The right colors can make your home look like something out of a magazine and the wrong colors can make it look like kids built it. Choose the right colors!

How to Clean Up Latex Paint Spills

Posted on July 27, 2011August 6, 2019

On a number of different posts here, I’ve talked about paint tools you need to own: certain brushes, certain rollers and so on. However, a must-have tool for every do-it-yourself painter or professional contractor is something that’s not as obvious: a wet/dry vacuum.

Believe it or not, this can be one of the most helpful, time-saving (and potentially life-saving) tools in your arsenal. See, when people paint inside their homes, one of the most common occurrences involves a ladder, a paint tray and the innate human desire to take short-cuts. Typically, it works like this: you’ve got your paint tray hooked to your ladder and you’re happily working your way around your room. At some point, you decide to move the ladder and, because you’re almost at the end of your project, you decide just to pull the ladder–after all, if you do it carefully, there’ll be no problem, right? Well, normally there isn’t. But every now and then, the ladder hits something and before you know it, the paint tray goes over the edge, hits your carpet (it always misses the dropcloth!) and you’ve got a mess.

And that’s why having a shop-vac on hand is such a life-saver: it gives you your best chance of dealing with the mess and preventing it from becoming a disaster.

However, having the right tool on hand is one thing. Knowing how to use it is another. So, with that in mind, here’s how you go about using your shop-vac to clean up a LATEX paint spill:

DON’T PANIC

The first thing you need to do–as is the case with any emergency–is to resist the natural urge to freak out. Yes, you spilled paint on the new carpet. Yes, it’s a mess. Yes, you’ll probably be in big trouble with someone else in your home. But freaking out and running around in circles isn’t going to help you save your neck. Calm, cool thinking wins out every time. So stay calm. That’s step one.

COLLECT YOUR TOOLS

Calmly (but quickly) grab a bucket of water, some old rags and either a couple wide (6″-10″) putty knives or some scraps of cardboard.

REMOVE PAINT FROM THE SURFACE

Start your clean up by removing as much paint as you can from the surface. You can do this by scraping it (carefully) off with the wide putty knives or the ripped up scraps of cardboard. Use either of these items to scoop as much paint off the carpet as possible and return it to the paint tray–NOT THE BUCKET (since you don’t want to add any contaminant to your paint bucket).

BRING ON THE DAMP RAGS

After the excess paint has been removed and you’re left with the paint that’s soaked into the carpet, bring out your damp rags. Use these to sponge the spot and remove as much of that soaked-in paint as possible.

BREAK OUT THE WET/DRY VAC

After you’ve done all of this, it’s time for the WET/DRY vacuum. Hit the spot carefully and pull up as much paint as possible. Introduce more clean water, work it around with your fingers or hand and then vacuum it back up. Do this again and again and again until the paint has been completely removed. Don’t quit with this step until you feel you’ve pulled out as much of the paint from the spill as you’re going to get. Once you let it dry, you’re done–you can’t go back for a second try tomorrow night.

DRY THE CARPET WELL

Once the paint’s removed, carefully blot the wet area with dry towels (don’t scrub the spot with your towels as you can damage your carpet that way.) Blot the area, removing excess moisture and then put a fan on the area and allow it to thoroughly dry.

If you follow these steps carefully and thoroughly, in about 24 hours, the spot should show no signs at all of the near tragedy that happened there. And all because you had a wet/dry vacuum in your tool belt!

4 Ways to Speed Up Your Next Weekend Paint Project!

Posted on June 22, 2011August 6, 2019

The thought of tackling a painting project doesn’t always fill us with excitement. In fact, a lot of us dread these “weekend-killers.” Many of us don’t get all warm and fuzzy over the thought of spending tons of time painting. At least I know I don’t.

Oh, the painting isn’t really the problem–that part’s relatively fun. It’s the washing of the walls, the patching of the nail holes, the taping. It’s the PREP WORK that I really hate. And I hate it because it adds so much time to my project.

But there’s a simple fix for this: Do the Prep Work Early!

PATCH THOSE NAIL HOLES

If you’re going to try to roll paint on your living room walls on a Saturday morning, then take 15 minutes on a Monday night and go around the room filling all the nail holes with a good spackling compound. We recommend White Lightning Lightweight Spackle or Crawford’s Spackling. Go around the entire room and fill ALL the nailholes and then quit for the night.

SAND THE SPACKLING

The night after you spackled all your nail holes, take another 15 minutes and go around the room doing a quick sanding of those spots. By this point, (if you’ve truly waited 24 hours) the spackling will be bone dry and will powder nicely as you sand it. This stage of the project should only take you 15 quick minutes as you work your way around that room.

WASH THE WALLS

Every paint job should start with a good wall washing using TSP (TriSodium Phosphate). However, washing the walls down on the day you want to paint can really slow you down–it’ll take a good 30 minutes to an hour to wash the walls and then another 15 minutes or so for them to dry. Avoid all of this by washing the walls down early. Just as we mentioned with the spackling and the sanding, take a night in the week BEFORE you plan to start painting and go around the room, washing the walls down. Doing this will save you all that time on the day of your project.

ROLL OUT THAT MASKING TAPE

Finally, the night before you plan to do your work, apply your masking tape to all your trim and around your doors and ceilings, etc. Of course, if you’re going to do this, you’ll want to use either 3M’s Blue Painter’s Masking Tape or 3M’s Blue (Orange Core) Safe Release Painter’s Tape. Both of these tapes will still cleanly remove after being applied early!

If you tackle these prep work steps early, you’ll have more nights of work–but, each night will be relatively short AND, best of all, when the weekend arrives, all the boring work will be out of the way. All you’ll need to do is pop the top on your gallon of paint and start rolling your new color on your walls.

Accomplishing this work early is a great way to minimize the frustration of a paint project. Give it a try–you’ll like the results!