But Sir, Did You Stir the Paint?

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

March 2025

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….

Read the entire post on Substack.

See DIY Pics here: Instagram

Check out June’s DIY journey in my novel.