When titling this blog, the song “Good times, Bad times” by Led Zeppelin started running through my brain like an ear worm until I changed the lyrics and ruined the song.

Good paint, bad paint, you know I’ve had my share

When my red paint won’t cover that dark brown wall

I just step back and stare…

I’ll get to the brown paint story in a minute, but first things first. Painting sucks.

Chemical formulations for modern paint are supposed to have improved over the last few decades. I mean I get it. Sometimes it takes a federal regulation to do things like remove lead from paint and that was a good thing, but wasn’t there an opportunity over that same time span to make paint better and cheaper too?

Paint is suffering from an identity crisis. Like a 14 year old boy with a pizza face and a fixation on Dungeons and Dragons, it simply does not know what it wants to be when it grows up. Is it a base paint? Is it a primer? Is it a moisture sealant? Is it oil based or latex? Is it really paint and primer in one? Does it really, and I mean really cover in one coat?

Head & Shoulders

I’m in process of finishing a pretty kick ass 8 foot, stand up paddle board made from Styrofoam and Cedar with all the professional bells and whistles installed like an ankle leash, vent plugs and an embedded carry handle. The great thing about polystyrene foam is that you can paint it any color you want. Latex paint actually sticks to the foam, and the fiberglass and epoxy covering sticks to the Latex paint. It’s awesome actually and allows you to be as bat shit crazy on colors and design as you might want to be. Now, try getting that paint off your hands.

My board will be mostly white with some sky blue accents on the ends, and a couple of paper printed graphics that will rest on top of the paint and epoxied down under the fiberglass. Anything you can dream up for graphics is easy enough to print on paper and add to the board. The paper just blends in with the white painted background, another cool design tip that helps make the board look like it was commercially made.

And so, I paint. I’m using a specialty brand of satin white “paint and primer in one” mix from my favorite Lowenards Depot store. American readers might get that amalgamated big box home center naming joke. But, a funny thing happened on my way to the sink. In a matter of a few seconds from accidentally brushing the knuckles of my left hand on the painted surface to getting over to the sink to wash it off, it had turned into a permanent tattoo. I mean it was more like 60 seconds, but I’m going for drama here. The paint would simply not wash off, and I was doing it just like my grandmother had pounded into me after digging for fishing worms up at her cabin; “USE SOAP AND A WASHCLOTH!” I did get most of it, but some white streaks remained in deep pores and cracks in the skin around my knuckles. Did that make it good paint or bad paint? How about a $40 gallon of sticky liquid? Forty bucks! OMG

It was the end of the day following two coats of white on both sides of the board, and I tried one last time to remove the traces of paint over at the sink, this time using some Dawn detergent and a brush but no dice. I shut off the lights to the shop and headed upstairs for a shower, because you know, impressive and widely acclaimed body odor. I soaped up again including my hands and arms but the dried paint seemed to be holding on for dear life. I then I reached for the bottle of Head and Shoulders shampoo. I put it on, I rubbed it in for only a few seconds. I’m not one of those guys like actors in a shampoo commercial who spend a half hour luxuriating in the feeling of running my fingers through my own remaining hairs. I pour it out, rub it in, make sure I’ve covered my whole head and then rinse it off. It takes seconds, not minutes. Maybe that all stems from my strict Catholic upbringing, parochial school and an endless bevy of nuns telling us all that “touching yourself is a SIN!”. Whatever. The shampoo task was complete. But wait a minute. What happened to the remaining paint stains? What the hell is in that bottle of Head and Shoulders?

I picture the chemists over at the National Paint Formulation Laboratories (Not a real thing) calling for a meeting with the Head and Shoulders people and the conversation going something like:

“We’ve kind of screwed these guys with that whole ‘paint and primer in one’ thing. Can you help us out?”

“Sure! We probably have a chemical additive that dissolves paint and in keeping with our own branding, keeps the dandruff away too. Though, it might, you know, accelerate hair loss.”

“That’s okay. We own a huge share of the Rogaine company. It’s all good.”

Golden Brown

Sticking with our music intro for a moment, I want to shift the conversation over to other paint colors of a bygone era and also where artists (and painters) might try to hide the details of their work. Back in 1981 a British band called the Stranglers had a hit song called Golden Brown. They had written the lyrics for sure, but the actual song melodies, beats, chords and keys came directly from a Jazz standard with the same title by Dave Brubeck in 1951. In all the interviews and documentaries given by the Stranglers, they seemed to hide the fact (in my opinion) that the song was ripped off from Brubeck. Brubeck was never credited. I would never try to hide the lurid details around my own work, that’s for sure. Unless we’re talking about the golden brown painted wall fiasco I tried to cover with dark red paint.

There was this popular paint color in the early 2000’s that everyone seemed to flock to as a means to wipe away the previous trend of white on white with maybe a touch of super light gray on wood trim. People loved the whole concept of an “accent wall”, where a single wall could bear a bolder color and then stand as a focal point in any room. Cappuccino Brown was the trend color of choice back then. It was everywhere, like the runny streaks in a baby diaper.

Thanks to the crappy economy and job market, we had chosen to move to a new state for a new job and into a new home originally built in 2001. And yes, in the master bedroom up against the back wall where the bed would most likely be placed was that same baby poop brown accent wall. We hated it. It must be painted. My wife wanted to match a dark red, almost maroon colored bed comforter and shams, so finding that dark red paint color was my mandate.

I went to my local LoweNards Depot store where the guy talked me into buying that whole new concept of “paint and primer” mixed together in the same paint. “Saves a priming paint step”, I was told, so worth the extra money per gallon. It’s logic! It saves time and money! I found a very close color to what my bride had requested and I bought 2 gallons even though my coverage estimates said a single gallon would be enough. I was sure to wash the walls down to remove any grease or candle soot residue or whatever the previous homeowners might have flung on their accent wall so I started clean.

The baby poop brown seemed to hang on for dear life. Even when using one of those heavily padded rollers, you know, the ones designed to hold and spread thick gobs of paint as you roll, that brown color would still peek through the red. It didn’t look like a baby diaper anymore. It looked like a crime scene at a manure factory.

Thankfully I had another expensive gallon of red to use. I used it. I took a step back. I could still see some of the brown tint passing through the red color. Annoyed, I headed back to LoweNards Depot and found the same guy who didn’t initially remember me at all. I told him about the failure of the premium, single coat coverage, paint and primer in one paint to cover the brown wall.

“Oh, you’re the Cappuccino Brown guy”, he said, grinning.

“Yeah, apparently I need another gallon because two didn’t cover”.

“You didn’t use a primer first?”

If I had a fully loaded super-soaker water gun hanging on my hip at the time, I would have hosed the guy down where he stood, in the aisle between the blue painters tape and the roller brushes.

Red Doesn’t Wash Out Either

So as I swallowed my pride, ate some crow and chomped on a slice of humble pie, I returned to the new vacant home to try coat number 3 on my wife’s glorious accent wall. Everything was set up as before with painters tape protecting the white side walls and ceiling and a heavy tarp covering the off-white carpet in the bedroom. I was frustrated and tired of doing the same job multiple times, so I unwittingly began to rush just to get this project over with. I overloaded my paint roller in order to make more passes on the wall, and just then, I saw a small drip form on the bottom of the roll. I witnessed it fly off the roll above my head and saw it fall straight down. The thick canvass tarp would catch it, right? This was my assumption. I painted on. I finished the wall.

Stepping back now, I could no longer see faint streaks of golden brown or cappuccino brown or baby poop brown peeking out anywhere. The wall, for better or worse, looked pretty awesome. And then I started to clean up. The painters tape was peeled off first, followed my the removal of the step ladder that I needed to reach to the peak of that vaulted wall. I started to roll up the tarp not seeing much in the way of any red drips anywhere until I pulled the tarp away from the wall. Though I had snugged the tarp right up to the floor molding, there was a little gap in one spot where you could see carpet. Yes. The shoe dropped. Here was a single drip of red paint on that off-white carpeting.

A mad dash ensued. I went for some dish soap and some rags and a 5 gallon bucket of water and the wet-dry shop vac. I soaped, I scrubbed, I rinsed, I vacuumed, I repeated. I did this looping process several times only to see a washed out shade of pink spread further out from the wall. I scrubbed on. It was dark outside now. I continued. I failed. I tried again. After 90 minutes of me trying to remove a paint color that wasn’t good enough to cover over brown but apparently great at staining carpet fiber, I threw in the towel, literally.

All of this took place the week before our moving company was scheduled to arrive to our new/used home with all our furniture. My wife and the kids would follow during the move but I did have a few items come with me in a U-Haul about 2 weeks early while we closed the sale of our previous home. I had my tools and painting gear, my tarps, some basic pots and pans and the master suite bed frame and mattress set so I’d have a place to sleep after each day of painting. I managed to repaint all the rooms my wife had identified for a new color during that 2 week span.

Interestingly or fortuitously for this story, the new faded pink stain on the carpet was magically situated in the middle of the accent wall, near the baseboard. Wanna guess where the bed sat once the wall was finished?

What stain?

So now years later while today’s mission is to add the blue accent paint on the top and tail of my newly fabricated paddle board, I rest easy knowing that I can in fact get all that paint off my hands by simply washing my hair.

“Did you use paint remover?”

“No, Head and Shoulders. The little hairs on the back of my hand even feel bouncier and more manageable.”