I’ve felt like the past couple of weeks have been pretty stressful when it comes to the house selections.  Final selections needed to be made on the tile and the woman at the company we’re going with to purchase and install the tile has got to be the absolute worst person that I’ve ever had to deal with.  I’ve already ranted about her a couple weeks ago, but her ridiculousness just keeps getting worse.  She is consistently getting things wrong and I have to back check everything she does.  I honestly feel like she’s one of those people that just tries to rip people off.  I literally told her to delete some of the tile for the boys’ backsplash and after doing that, the price of the backsplash INCREASED.  Then I have to call her out on it and she’s says crap like, “oops, not sure how that happened,” or “my computer has gremlins.”  Every change is like that.  And I feel bad for her other clients who don’t pay close attention because I’m 100% positive that she overcharges people.  It’s unbelievable.  Anyhow, I think that I’m about 95% done with having to deal with her from now on out…so that feels good!

But then something even worse happened – I went out to the house and they painted the ENTIRE HOUSE the WRONG color!!!!  Aaaahhhhh!  I visited on Thursday to talk with Matt and the paint job looked great, which it does – there’s a clean crisp line between the wall and the ceiling which looks really good.  But all day I kept thinking that it felt dark in there after I left.  So Friday morning when I went out there to pay Matt, I brought out the sample board that I had painted our color selection (Farrow & Ball’s Cornforth White @ 50%) and immediately we both knew that they painted it the wrong color.  Instead of reducing the paint saturation by 50%, they painted it the full 100% color.  So the ‘color’ is correct, but it’s a lot darker tone than I ever wanted it to be.

Matt said that since the tile guys and trim guys are going to start on Monday that if it needed to be repainted I have a while to think about the color and what I wanted to do.  Clearly it was the painter’s mistake (since I had written direction on the exact color I wanted), so they’d have to repaint it later.  Well, about an hour after getting to work, I got a call from Matt saying that if we want it repainted, that they’ll do it, but it needs to be done now before all of the trimwork goes in.  With the amount of windows and doors in our house, to have them tape everything off later and repaint was going to add a significant amount of cost & time for the painters.  So I need to make the decision if it needed to be repainted…TODAY.  My mom was busy spending time with one of her friend’s today so couldn’t help me out and I desperately felt like I needed a second opinion that wasn’t a guy’s (Matt’s or the painter’s).  Luckily my friend Sarah was around and met me there at lunch!  And luckily her hubby Kevin was working from home and could watch their adorable daughter while Sarah spent some time looking at paint colors sans kiddo.

We both agreed – Cornforth White looks good, and although it’s not a dark color, it’s definitely not light and airy either like the tone at 50% looks, which is the feeling I was going for.  But is it worth having them repaint the entire house?!?

On first blush, I’d think – the painter screwed up, have him repaint it.  But then I start thinking about the repercussions…it’ll delay the other subs that would have started a week, which means they’re out of work for that week and I guarantee that they’ll be disgruntled and rushing through our job to try to finish on time.  So is that really what I want?  The tile and trimwork guys to be angry and hurried?  Not really.  And then, the painter was supposed to do some extra work for us that was never included in the initial scope of work/bid which included painting some additional colors in the boys bedrooms & dining room, painting the ceilings a different color than the walls, painting the risers on the stairs, extra millwork, etc.  And, as ALL CONTRACTORS do – if I had him repaint the entire house, the cost for all these extras will be more than what they should have been to help him recoup some of the costs he incurred repainting the house.  So then I know I’d end up paying more than I should have.  Ugh.

Alternatively, if I keep the color that’s already on the walls – we have quite a bit of negotiating power and all of those extra items that were never in the scope, the painter will now have to do at no cost.

After lots of input from Sarah, and Matt pretending he’s a chandelier holding up spot lights for us, I walked away thinking that I’ll leave the color for now and after all of the finishes are installed – like the flooring, trim, cabinets – I may want them to repaint the great room & rec room.  It’s really hard to tell how it’ll all look once the finishes are in, lights are on, and the film is off all of the windows – who knows, maybe it’ll look great! (Here’s hoping)!

It’s been a couple of days and I’m STILL really not sure what the right choice to do here was, but it’s only paint – and that’s the easiest thing to change in a house.  So if we hate it later, I guess we’ll be repainting it.