How Not to Buy Paint

The first thing I wanted to do after moving into my place a week ago was to change the hardware accessories in the main bathroom. I successfully changed the hand towel ring and the toilet paper holder. When it came to the towel bar though, I had a hard time finding a 22" towel bar. The old one was that long and I wanted to be able to put the new one right over where the old one used to be screwed into the wall. Seems like these days, all the towel bars are either 18" or 24" long. Damn it. Now it meant I had to fill in the holes left by the old towel bar and paint over it.

I figured out there's this thing called spackling which you can use to fill holes in the wall. So that got taken care of. The next thing was paint. It didn't look like the previous owner left me any paint for that room. Bummer. I went to my usual shop and picked up tons of those little cards to try to match the paint. Someone then told me that if I brought in a chip of paint from the wall, they can match the paint up for me automatically. How would I get a chip of paint tho? I had a hard time keeping flakes of paint I scraped off from blowing off my finger tips. Finally though, I found a small streak of paint on my tub that I could peel off.

I went into the store with my 5mm by 5mm 'chip' of paint thinking finally I can finish up this project. Well, the store clerk laughed at me when she saw the paint chip I brought in. In between laughs she told me it was too small. She needed something more the size of a silver dollar. I didn't know how to get a piece of paint that big w/o putting another huge hole in my wall. Apparently tho, that is what I had to do. The gentleman behind me kindly showed me his sample. He said to take a cutter and cut out from an inconspicuous place on the wall, like in the bottom corner behind the wall. Once I outline the edges, I should just be able to peel it off. I would then have to fill it in with spackling and paint over it. Disappointed the woman could not do anything with my chip, I walked over to the rows of cards and tried to match it up that way. After a while, I realized how stupid it was trying to match it that way and went home. I took another look at the stock of paint I did have hoping the color I needed would miraculously appear. On this second look, the Antique White didn't look so white after all. It looked more creamy. As a matter of fact, it was exactly the same color as the paint in the bathroom. Now only if I had bought a paint brush while I was at the store....