Home (un)improvement

I have never really watched those home improvement shows but the few times I have they look fun. And pretty easy too.

A few years ago, I moved into a little rental house. I’m really good at taking care of houses. I keep them clean and well cared for, but accidents happen. Like burning the countertop with a candle or burning the siding while using a grill and a few other things.

When it was time to move out, I was worried about how much of my security deposit they would take so I decided to fix every last thing I could. By myself. Well with my brother of course. He’s usually around for most mishaps. Usually, an active participant.

First project was the blinds. We had broken blinds due to dogs and kids throwing balls in the house. I have heard that they will charge you an arm and a leg for that so it’s best to just replace blinds yourself.

Well, how hard can it be, right? I watched a YouTube video about it, and it seemed simple enough. I was searching all around the house for a measuring tape so I could measure the blinds, but I just couldn’t find one.

And then I remembered when I was little my mom would measure things with her hand. If she wanted to see if a couch or dresser would fit in a space, she would just stretch her thumb and middle finger out one time and put the thumb where the middle finger was and then do it again from that spot. That’s how she would measure things. 6 hand lengths, she would say.  This dresser will fit in this spot because it’s six hand lengths. What a brilliant and accurate way to measure I remember my 7-year-old self thinking. I was always impressed with anything my mom did.

I figured I would just measure my blinds like that. Aren’t there just standard size blinds? So, I did my little hand measurements just like I watched my mom do when I was little and measured the blinds. They were 4 hand lengths, and one finger. Easy Peezy.

I walked into Home Depot. Someone asked if they could help me and I told them I was looking for blinds, so they led me to the blind aisle. I told them I was looking for the cheapest blinds. They asked me what size, and I said “oh, I measured with my hands”, with proud look on my face.

“You measured with your hands?”
⁃ Home Depot blinds lady with a very perplexed and confused look on her face

“Oh yes, it is four hands and one finger. See? I do it like this!” And I started measuring with my hands down a box of blinds.

Looking carefully, though, I’m noticing that the measurements are so exact and within inches of each other. Hmm…

Who makes that many different size blinds? Are there really that many different sizes of windows? I was thinking this might be a little trickier than I thought. But I couldn’t show my doubts and insecurities.

Full of confidence, I grabbed the box that looked like it was four hands and one finger length, and I told her confidently that this is it!  This is the one I need. 4 hand lengths and one finger.

I didn’t want her to think I was an idiot so I told her I realize there was extra room in the box and the blinds did not fit perfectly from each end of the box and I have taken that into consideration.

Ok, bring them back if they don’t fit.
-Home Depot blinds lady

I won’t! They will be fine.
-I say cheerfully over my shoulder

Feeling smug, I brought my blinds home. I took them out of the box and you guessed it. They were absolutely not the right size. That day I learned that you can absolutely not measure blinds with your hands. I blame my mother for this.

I also learned there is an infinite number of different size blinds.

When I was retelling the story to my mom, she laughed and said that you can’t use that method for exact measurements. Well, how was I supposed to know that? I just saw her measuring things like that when I was little, so I figured that’s how you measure things. She should have clarified that 43 years ago. I still blame my mother.

So then I actually got my brother to help me find a measuring tape, we measured them exactly, returned the ones we had and got new ones that fit.

I felt like I was doing the walk of shame bringing those blinds back in hoping the same blinds lady would have gone home by then.

Of course she hadn’t.  She started laughing out loud when she saw me.

“I figured you’d be back she said,” and we both had a really good laugh.

At least she now has a funny story to share at the dinner table about the crazy woman who measures with her hands. I like being people’s entertainment.  Makes me feel like I am contributing to the world.  In my own Brita way.

It made me feel a little better that I was only a couple inches off. I think that’s pretty good considering what I now know is an imperfect measuring technique. Now I know how important it is to be exact with measuring blinds. Learn something new every day I guess.

Do you know those LED lights that were super popular and all the kids wanted them around the top of their rooms? The ones where you just peel off the sticky back and stick along the wall near the ceiling and they just seem so easy?

Those are great! Both my kids wanted them, and we put them up in their rooms and it was so much fun. Until it’s time to move and take them down. They just stick on so when you peel them off, they should easily come right off without ripping off any paint underneath. Right? Wrong!

I don’t know if that always happens or if there was just a shady paint job done in this particular house but when I peeled them off, paint just came off every few inches.

After a little gasp, and a moment of panic, I pulled myself together and I told my brother that we can easily fix this. We will just paint the top 2 inches of the room. I know I saw paint in the shed. It’ll be easy. We’ve got this. I think I actually even high-fived him as I walked out of the room.

We went in the garage and there were two different paint cans. I like it how they have a little drop of the color on the lid so you can see what it looks like. This particular room we were painting was a little green and the rest of the house was more beige.

I picked up the can that looked greenish to me and I brought it inside. I sort of held it up against the wall. This is definitely the one, I told my brother, full of confidence.

My brother and I each got a paintbrush and poured some paint into a little plastic cup and he started at one end and I started at the other end and we started just painting over the spots where the lights ripped off the first layer of paint. We were talking and laughing and having a great time.  See how fun home improvement can be?

The color looks a little light I thought and I asked him what he thought. He agreed with me, but then I said, “Paint always looks different when it dries so I’m sure it’s the right color. Let’s just keep going.”

So we kept going, and I kept doubting whether it was the right color, but then I just kept convincing myself that it was absolutely was the right color and it will just look different when it’s dry.

Do you know when you’re too far into something that you can’t admit you were wrong, even though you know you are wrong? I kind of felt like that. It was too late to turn back now. But also, I said a little prayer because you know, miracles can happen.

So we finished painting the top 2 inches of the room and it looked a little off, but I said we’ll just let it dry for a couple hours and then check back. I’m sure it will be fine.

So I shut the door and went and had a glass of wine because sometimes wine fixes things like the wrong color paint. Or maybe wine really doesn’t fix anything and it’s all in my head.

When it was dry, and we went to look at it and as you can guess, it was absolutely the wrong color.

My brother said, maybe it’s just the lighting, and he turned off the light and used the flashlight on his phone to shine on wall. It did match when he did that but I am sure people were going to turn on the light I said.  I was laughing so hard at that I almost peed my pants.

So I guess it is the other can of paint in the shed. We went back out, and we got the other can of paint, and we redid the whole thing and guess what, it was perfect! I guess I confidently picked the wrong color to start with. Isn’t that how life goes? We often confidently make the wrong choice.

We fixed it! Mission accomplished, even though it did take a little longer to get there, but, if you’ve been reading my blog, I never do things the easy way. Then I would have nothing to write about. There are always second chances and try agains and do overs I eventually get where I want to be.

And can we just talk about those command strips? They look perfect! Have you seen the videos? Have you read the instructions? Have you used them? What an amazing way to hang things up without putting any nails in the walls. They look like the greatest invention ever! And so practical for renters.

I was determined not to put any nail holes in the walls because I did that in my last rental house, and it was just a pain to fix all those little nail holes. (little did I know that these stupid command strips would be even a bigger pain)

When I moved in I bought probably at least 50 of those little commando hooks and strips and I hung paintings and pictures all over my walls. I am one of those people who want their walls full of pictures from when their kids were little. I am NOT one of those organized people who has school pictures from every year for every kid in a nice neat row on their wall although I have ALWAYS have been jealous of those people and wanted to be them.  Mine are just a splattering of my kids’ pictures in no order at all.  The point is I like my walls to be very very decorated.

I even used those command things to hang up curtain rods! These are amazing I thought. All proud and smug like I usually am. And it will be so simple to take them off when I move out. I probably even patted myself on the back when I was finished hanging everything up.

And honestly, they worked great. Until I was moving out and it was time to take them all off the walls.

Well, I don’t know if anyone else has ever tried to remove one of these things, but if you don’t pull that little sticky thing in exactly the right direction and exactly the right angle, half the drywall will come off with it.

And if you do pull them in the correct way, they will snap off and hit you in the face. The hitting me in the face thing I can take, but those huge holes in my drywall were very upsetting especially since this was the exact thing I was trying to avoid.

I’m not even kidding! I watched videos and I read directions after the first mess up, and I tried to perfect the technique and maybe half of them came off the way they were supposed to. How am I a well-educated, 50-year-old woman who cannot get these stupid command strips to come off my wall like they’re supposed to? Why did I bother trying to do things the easy way? 50 nail holes would be way easier to fix than this mess.

So we went to Home Depot, and we got the spackle and the little scraping tools that come with it. I really like the purple color by the way. It’s bright and cheerful and it makes you think this can be fun. I’m always trying to make the best of a bad situation.

But it’s a lot more difficult than it seems. I mean do people have to go to spackle school for this? I put too much on and then I tried to scrape it a little flatter and then it’s all indented because I scraped too much so then I put some more on, and I don’t want to scrape it too low but now there’s just a big bump. So I scrape it too low again and then I add more and there’s a big bump and I do this repeatedly about five times until I realize I really should just leave the big bump. Which I guess is how it’s supposed to be because then you sand him down after he dries? Redoing and undoing the same spot five times is just going to make this process really long.

You would think after it dries that it would be pretty easy to sand it flat but it’s not! I thought I sanded it flat and then I walked away, and I looked at it and there was still a big bump! So I sanded it flat again, and then I walked away and then when I looked at it, there was still a bump! How does it look flat one minute and then the next it’s not? “Am I on Candid Camera or something?” I thought. “Is this a big prank?” It wasn’t. Seriously, how do the spackle and sanding guys get it so perfectly flat? It must be a talent. I have a newfound respect for them. This stuff is a lot harder than it looks!

After trying about 10 times I decided that a little bulge was just fine. Was anybody really going to notice?

So we did the best we could and we got the correct color out of the shed this time, and painted over those multiple little speckled bulges all over the walls.

Surprisingly, we did not get charged for them so I think we did a pretty good job of doing it wrong, but still somehow fooling people. I guess sometimes it doesn’t have to be perfect.

As i said, I was never one for watching those home-improvement shows. I found them boring. Maybe I should start watching them.

It seems like I’m pretty good at unimproving my house. Maybe watching those shows will improve that.

Or I should just give up and hire someone who actually knows what they’re doing. But what would be the fun in that?