If at first you don't succeed
If there is one thing I have learned with my multiple DIY projects over the last few years it is this....
If at first you don't succeed .... keep on asking people until you get the answer you want!
I know ... that sounds weird, and I don't mean it to be "quite" the way it sounds. But really, Home Depot, Lowes, even the hardware rental places that you can check out don't know SQUAT half the time! I have been told NO NO NO - can't do that - this won't work - do this - do that - and most of the time, the answers are either not what I wanted to hear, or were complete and utter BS to begin with. I'm sure THEY didn't think that...but I knew that to be the case at times so I simply shook my head and did the "oh...okay" dumb blonde looks and then left the store. Then I return four or five hours later and ask a different person the same things and get totally different answers.
This last week was absolutely no exception to this rule. When I began ripping the carpet out of my bathroom like a crazy woman, I had in mind that I was going to stain the floor in shades of chocolate, red and a very light tan. It never occurred to me that perhaps I should make sure that those are all available colors in semi-transparent stain BEFORE starting this whole process.
So here I am, all of the carpet is off the floor, the baseboards have been pulled up and ripped up, the floor has been cleaned and scraped, holes filled and prepared as much as it is going to be for the next step - the acid stain application. The first problem I encounter is that it is raining - and has been raining ALL WEEK LONG! You aren't really supposed to do this process in high humidity or if rain is expected within like 24 hours of the process. So I wait. But in the meantime, I figured it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and buy the stain so that it is ready to go when the weather clears up and I'm not wasting precious time waiting for a nap to end when I could be staining during a nap, ya know? So I go to Sherwin Williams, get all the info on their colors, go to Home Depot...which is where I have historically purchased my stains, and then check out two different Lowe's to see what they have as far as stain (nothing) and to check out rental of a buffer (ugh - I have decided against this - at least for this room - since this is too costly for the daily amount of time I have to work on the floor and that the rental people are freaking more clueless than I am about these things).
When I finally go to actually BUY the stain - I am told and I quote "we can't do those colors" for two of the three at
Home Depot! AHHHHHHHH......so I tell her, no worries, Sherwin Williams told me they can so I will just get them all there then, thanks but no thanks. THEN, I discover that Sherwin Williams does not even SELL semi-transparent at the moment (What the heck!) they only sell solid colors which I am not the least bit interested in! That is soooooo not what the man told me when I was in there! But whatevs! They won't start selling the semi-transparent until later this year or early next year. DOUBLE AHHHH! Now I have to go BACK to Home Depot and eat crow, and figure out what colors I CAN do! So I waited - a new day donned new answers but still not the answers I wanted and not the colors I wanted. So I waited until last night - hoping a new shift would bring a new employee or employees and get me different/better answers. Well thank goodness that this was in fact the case! This time, I walked in and had the color chart for the semi-transparent colors with me. I was just super honest with the lady and told her - this is the color I want for this...but darker. This is the color that I basically want for this, but lighter and there is no where NEAR the other color I want. I really really want something very red, is there ANY WAY you can just play with it until we get it there? Well let me tell you, Caroline was AWESOME! She said SURE! and that is exactly what she did. She took my brown 20% darker, my tan a little lighter and then took an orange type color they had, switched up some of the colors, added some magenta and a whole lot more of the red and made what used to be orange a really PERFECT shade of red for me! I was THRILLED! I can't believe I kept getting no's from so many people and then this fabulous woman just charged right onto the scene and without hesitation let me alter the colors and play with it till we got it the shade I wanted it!
I LOVE HER!
The week has been a lesson in patience. It was a lesson in not flying off the handle and freaking out on people when they can't or won't attempt to do what I am wanting/needing done. It was a lesson in not screaming at the man in Sherwin Williams that I really, really wanted to scream at for wasting my time and telling me all the great things he could do - that he really couldn't even begin to do anytime soon! It was a lesson in not settling for something that is less than what I really want - unless it is truly the last resort and I have exhausted all other avenues of people to talk to and places to go. It was a lesson in always researching what I am doing and not just relying on the person at a store - because if I had done that on a buffer -
I would be in for $40 a day + parts on a machine that was NOT the one I needed with parts that were not the parts I needed!
This week was full of life lessons - and somehow, by the Grace of God - I managed to handle them all without any major freak out attacks, without any yelling screaming fits of rage, without any temper tantrums that would render me unable to return to any of the said stores ever again.
Now, if the rain would just STOP - I could actually start the work that I am sooooo dying to start doing and pray like crazy that all of this pays off with a floor at least somewhat similar to what I am envisioning. Time and pictures will tell the tale as I get going - whenever that day may come. Until then...we are walking on grey concrete that has cans and trays and stir sticks and knives and all kinds of other fun stuff lying all around. Addison is not allowed anywhere near that room right now. :)
If at first you don't succeed .... keep on asking people until you get the answer you want!
I know ... that sounds weird, and I don't mean it to be "quite" the way it sounds. But really, Home Depot, Lowes, even the hardware rental places that you can check out don't know SQUAT half the time! I have been told NO NO NO - can't do that - this won't work - do this - do that - and most of the time, the answers are either not what I wanted to hear, or were complete and utter BS to begin with. I'm sure THEY didn't think that...but I knew that to be the case at times so I simply shook my head and did the "oh...okay" dumb blonde looks and then left the store. Then I return four or five hours later and ask a different person the same things and get totally different answers.
This last week was absolutely no exception to this rule. When I began ripping the carpet out of my bathroom like a crazy woman, I had in mind that I was going to stain the floor in shades of chocolate, red and a very light tan. It never occurred to me that perhaps I should make sure that those are all available colors in semi-transparent stain BEFORE starting this whole process.
So here I am, all of the carpet is off the floor, the baseboards have been pulled up and ripped up, the floor has been cleaned and scraped, holes filled and prepared as much as it is going to be for the next step - the acid stain application. The first problem I encounter is that it is raining - and has been raining ALL WEEK LONG! You aren't really supposed to do this process in high humidity or if rain is expected within like 24 hours of the process. So I wait. But in the meantime, I figured it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and buy the stain so that it is ready to go when the weather clears up and I'm not wasting precious time waiting for a nap to end when I could be staining during a nap, ya know? So I go to Sherwin Williams, get all the info on their colors, go to Home Depot...which is where I have historically purchased my stains, and then check out two different Lowe's to see what they have as far as stain (nothing) and to check out rental of a buffer (ugh - I have decided against this - at least for this room - since this is too costly for the daily amount of time I have to work on the floor and that the rental people are freaking more clueless than I am about these things).
When I finally go to actually BUY the stain - I am told and I quote "we can't do those colors" for two of the three at
Home Depot! AHHHHHHHH......so I tell her, no worries, Sherwin Williams told me they can so I will just get them all there then, thanks but no thanks. THEN, I discover that Sherwin Williams does not even SELL semi-transparent at the moment (What the heck!) they only sell solid colors which I am not the least bit interested in! That is soooooo not what the man told me when I was in there! But whatevs! They won't start selling the semi-transparent until later this year or early next year. DOUBLE AHHHH! Now I have to go BACK to Home Depot and eat crow, and figure out what colors I CAN do! So I waited - a new day donned new answers but still not the answers I wanted and not the colors I wanted. So I waited until last night - hoping a new shift would bring a new employee or employees and get me different/better answers. Well thank goodness that this was in fact the case! This time, I walked in and had the color chart for the semi-transparent colors with me. I was just super honest with the lady and told her - this is the color I want for this...but darker. This is the color that I basically want for this, but lighter and there is no where NEAR the other color I want. I really really want something very red, is there ANY WAY you can just play with it until we get it there? Well let me tell you, Caroline was AWESOME! She said SURE! and that is exactly what she did. She took my brown 20% darker, my tan a little lighter and then took an orange type color they had, switched up some of the colors, added some magenta and a whole lot more of the red and made what used to be orange a really PERFECT shade of red for me! I was THRILLED! I can't believe I kept getting no's from so many people and then this fabulous woman just charged right onto the scene and without hesitation let me alter the colors and play with it till we got it the shade I wanted it!
I LOVE HER!
The week has been a lesson in patience. It was a lesson in not flying off the handle and freaking out on people when they can't or won't attempt to do what I am wanting/needing done. It was a lesson in not screaming at the man in Sherwin Williams that I really, really wanted to scream at for wasting my time and telling me all the great things he could do - that he really couldn't even begin to do anytime soon! It was a lesson in not settling for something that is less than what I really want - unless it is truly the last resort and I have exhausted all other avenues of people to talk to and places to go. It was a lesson in always researching what I am doing and not just relying on the person at a store - because if I had done that on a buffer -
I would be in for $40 a day + parts on a machine that was NOT the one I needed with parts that were not the parts I needed!
This week was full of life lessons - and somehow, by the Grace of God - I managed to handle them all without any major freak out attacks, without any yelling screaming fits of rage, without any temper tantrums that would render me unable to return to any of the said stores ever again.
Now, if the rain would just STOP - I could actually start the work that I am sooooo dying to start doing and pray like crazy that all of this pays off with a floor at least somewhat similar to what I am envisioning. Time and pictures will tell the tale as I get going - whenever that day may come. Until then...we are walking on grey concrete that has cans and trays and stir sticks and knives and all kinds of other fun stuff lying all around. Addison is not allowed anywhere near that room right now. :)
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