But Sir, Did You Stir the Paint?

“If nothing is straight, then nothing’s really crooked, either.”

Have you ever asked yourself: Did that man stir the paint?

No? Well, consider yourself lucky, my friend. Consider yourself lucky that you haven’t had to watch him walk around your green yard, splashing a watery chemical pigment onto the low growing thyme and clover with every shimmy of his hips.

In 2021, I bought this house, thinking to myself: I can call a contractor for help. Can’t I?

I was naive.

He didn’t stir the paint. After months of consultation with the person in charge of this 100+ year old construction company, and going to the trouble of having it added to the actual contract that “new boards will be painted prior to installation”, he didn’t stir the paint.

The crew did indeed bring the paint—I know so because they charged me for it, the entire unnecessarily large gallon. And they did slop some watery mess onto the windowsill boards, whatever that stuff at the top of an unstirred can of paint is. It somewhat covered the gobs of caulking lathered directly onto the wood seams like frosting.

I suppose it was too much to ask: having boards primed properly before installation and neatly caulked afterwards.

This wasn’t the only shortcoming of the enterprise—I’ll let your imagination run wild. And it certainly isn’t the only contractor experience gone awry in the last four years. Wiser and calmer 2024-me thought if I hired a company that is about as old as my house, I might have more luck than some handyman found on NextDoor, or yet another disappointing word-of-mouth. And I didn’t even ask for anything that complicated: gutters, wood repairs. It was supposed to be a test, a low risk assessment of their skills before trusting them with other parts of my house.

But, try as I might, I was foiled by my own plan.

It became quickly apparent that we weren’t on the same page about what it means to do something “properly”. And it became a woefully expensive test once they were in too deep for me to bail. So deep that nobody would come back and start where they left off, but with enough redeeming qualities that it slid into the realm of something I’m legally required to pay for.

I learned the hard way that even the simplest jobs, like securing a gutter hanger onto my roof, can be deeply destructive.

I don’t know what went wrong. I thought I did everything right.

The leader of the enterprise was amiable when we met to sign papers on my kitchen counter. Yes, he did spell a number of things wrong, and forget negatives in important places (“will be installed in a neat manor with jagged edges”). But he listened to me. He made a few visits to inspect the premises and discuss the needed repairs. We drew a picture to agree on how the aluminum would cover the parts of the fascia behind the gutters, so that it would look neat at the edges. He didn’t pressure me to opt for a whole house vinyl wrap and acknowledged the advantages of cement shingle siding.

And he agreed that the boards would be primed prior to installation…he insisted…

Here’s where my movie would cut to the image of me crying and breaking out into stress hives on an otherwise quiet Saturday morning.

The entire experience registered more like a traumatic event than a business transaction. And it lingered on like one, for months after it should have ended.

I did pay in late fall for the work that was done, so technically, it is over. But it was too scarring to even let out a sigh of relief. And there’s reminders of them around every corner.

I’ve been distracting myself by moving ahead with other projects. The last four years of this haven’t been pretty, but I’ve done a lot of important upgrades, so I can focus on some pretty stuff.

Big moves are being made in my first floor apartment, which was occupied when I bought the place. It’s been vacant for just under a year now—except for the boxes of linoleum floating floor tiles that needed to be installed last July and an array of paint samples. I’m currently figuring out how to do a pretty metal drop ceiling, and picking paint colors for the kitchen cabinets.

And don’t worry: there’s still plenty of gore to come, and many more stories to tell, plus tips and tricks.

I’ll mostly be doing this alone, and I won’t be using an entire garage full of power tools. I’m more of a tool minimalist, and I like reusing things.

My design mantra is: Minimal Moves, Maximal Impact.

Some upcoming projects are: dramatic dark closet remodels, trash-picked furniture staging, hanging my shower curtain rod from the ceiling, installing 1100sf of Marmoleum Cinch Loc flooring, kitchen plant shelf, wallpapering my fridge, painting an accent wall on my sunporch, replacing a thermometer in a vintage Hotpoint oven, painting kitchen cabinets mint green (probably), raspberry pruning, invasive worm hunting, installing metal drop ceiling tiles… AND MORE!

Stay tuned, folks, and subscribe below for updates.

See DIY Pics here: Instagram

Check out June’s DIY journey in my novel, Ire of the Vamp.