Pink Putty and Paint Stirrers

When Dr. HokieKev and I decided to move to Utah, we also decided to buy a house. We took a long weekend last March to fly out and look at over 30 houses...in three days. We bought the last one we looked at. Fanciness and upgrades enticed us. Things like this:
And these:
And all this (which, consequently was its own pain in the butt- but I think we finally have it working right):

And this lovely kitchen with its gorgeous travertine wall:

The reason for all of the fanciness was mostly the fact that the previous owner was the builder. In fact, that is his profession- he builds houses. He puts fancy upgrades in his. So, we bought his house and with it got the upgrades. We own these things now- they are still fancy.

However, in all of these upgrades and all of this fanciness, the former owner neglected to pay attention to details. Let me remind you- he is a builder, he builds houses. That is how he makes money. Anyway, he left out the details. I don't know why I have picked now to start worrying about these things, but in the last few weeks they have really bothered me. You see, there were several spots throught out the house where paint was touched up- with the wrong color. There is a fairly large section of an accent wall in our living room- the only wall in the whole house that is a different color from the rest- that was painted the wrong color. There were nail holes. And gouges in the wall. And almost every light switch plate looked like someone had taken a chopstick size screwdriver and punched a hole in the wall right next to it. The ones without actual holes, well...you could tell that there were holes which were painted over- poorly.

I mean, I guess I could give the guy the benefit of the doubt. When you are moving out, you are bound to ding some walls or leave some nail holes unfilled. But once again, he is a builder. He does this stuff for a living. That is how he makes money. I could also see if the fixing of these things took time. And before today- maybe I thought they did. But once again- DUDE BUILDS HOUSES. FOR A LIVING.

Once again, I don't know what this has just started to bother me, but it has. Noone will be able to tell that the accent wall is two colors. But I know. Most people won't realize the poorly painted over imperfections. But I will. So today, I went around my upstairs with a can of pink putty and filled in the holes and gouges. It took less than ten minutes. I didn't even have the proper putty knife. I used a paint stirrer. Did I mention the putty was pink?


After about an hour, the pink putty turned white. Once again, I took less than ten minutes to go around and sand away the excess. One day this week, I will take another ten minutes or so to paint over the holes and dings and dents. I don't build houses for a living. I also no longer have chopstick size holes next to all my upstairs light switches (I am saving the downstairs for another day).

Now there is the small matter of that pesky 1500 lb. gun safe in our office...