Paint your house the wrong shade and you’ll get death threats! It’s happening to a couple in Texas who got permission to paint their house blue, but when the shade of ‘blue’ wasn’t specified they painted it teal blue. Amazing.
(story in London Daily Mail of teal house fight)
It brings back memories of one of my biggest gaffes. My first house in Denver was a dirty canary yellow and after living there a few years I really wanted to change it. I hired a painter and picked out a shade of soft gray that I thought would be very elegant. Since I was working 15 hour days at the TV station I wasn’t there when the painter did the house.
My wife called me at work and said, “You’d better come home immediately, there’s trouble with the neighbors.”
I raced home to find about fifteen or twenty neighbors gathered in the street in front of my newly painted house. But Good Lord, there was my painted house. The painter had used the correct shade of paint, but that house looked for all the world like the blue color you might see on a beached dead, rotting whale. It was horrible.
I assured the crowd that I would re-paint the house immediately and the second paint job was started the very next day, this time in true soft gray. There was no Homeowners Association. No threats of liens or lawsuits. There didn’t need to be. I just did what any one of us would and should do.
Once in a while I drive through that neighborhood of thirty-five years ago. The house is still painted soft gray.
