Floor Registers

I am a spray paint queen.

You don't like the way that $10 lamp looks? Spray paint it.
Your railing is peeling and cracked? Scrub it down and spray paint it.
You name it, I've probably spray painted it at least once. I typically try not to throw things out or buy replacements until I've tried to spray what I've already got. Old sinks, picture frames, furniture, knickknacks, the list could go on forever.

I'm quite good at spray painting too. Not too runny, not too light. I learned it from my youth minister, who used to work with theatre props and was a master at creating sets and props. And being good at spraying painting in Oklahoma wind is saying something.

Our dear sweet HVAC installer provided tan-ish brown floor register covers for our house. I know he thought he was doing good since they were the closest thing to our wood floor color. But they ugly. They so ugly even my half blind great aunt would think they were ugly.

I actually don't think I have a half blind great aunt, but if I did, she would think they weren't all that good looking.

I knew the ones that ended up on the tile would need to be painted and figured I'd end up painting the ones on the wood floors at some point too. But the tile floor situation was much more critical than the wood floor situation.

Ignore the drywall mud all over it, just look at the brown. Ick, right?

Just like the grout, I want these puppies, in the tile floors, to just go away. One day while at Lowe's we swung by the spray paint department and picked up a can of gray spray paint. Without a tile sample to compare it to. And here's the thing, I'm great with color, when and only when it is in front of me. I am absolutely, positively horrible at color selection and blending when I'm trying to do it by memory.

But the cap looked close enough to the tile so I popped these guys up out of the tile floors, scraped all the drywall mud off, sprayed them down with a cleaning solution and took them to the backyard for a quick update.

They were looking pretty good. I got three of them done while helping Paul on some other tasks and Addison was down for a nap. But once I got them inside and back into their cozy homes I gasped at how ridiculously far off in color they were.

They appeared to be very blue instead of gray and looked almost as bad as the tan ones. I rolled my eyes out of frustration that I was going to have to buy another can of spray paint. I can't believe I wasted a perfectly good can of spray paint (cha-ching) that I'm just now going to have to paint right over.

Paul mentioned they were still a little tacky for his liking when he dropped the other two into place and when I looked up at him, there right next to him on the counter was a can of spray paint P-R-I-M-E-R. We didn't even buy spray paint. We bought primer. And not once did I read the can, and not once did I check the color and not once in spray painting or talking did I even see the huge six letter word at the top of the can as bold as it could be.

At least now when I paint over them, I'll be painting over primer and not paint. I don't feel so bad about the wasted $5 now. I mean, not wasted, totally on purpose, primed floor register covers.

Next time we swing by the home improvement store, which you know, we do practically every day, we plan to take a small tile sample with us. Now I'll just be putting my handy dandy spray paint skills to use twice on these guys. Unfortunately, and as we all know so well, this is the perfect example of, "ain't nobody got time for that".

Guys, I haven't been able to get that song out of my head since the first time I saw the autotune remix. You're welcome.