Paint

Paint

Home Improvement Agency Style

In about 1972, the house in Plano Texas that we were living in needed some painting done on the interior. What made this more complicated was that some of the old paint in the house was going to stay, so he had to match the old paint exactly. But I hear you saying, so what? Use the color-matching computer at the paint department. Mind you this is 1972 and there is no such animal. So my Dad went to the hardware store and bought several cans of paint.

When he came home, he meticulously painted just selected parts of the interior of the house. If you know anything about paint, it is that the color you buy is not the color when dry. So back then, you had to eyeball the colors and guess. Except in my Dad's case, he cheated. The new paint when dry matched the old paint exactly.

I asked him how the heck he did that with any hesitation. He said that when he planted bugs and transmitters in the walls of Embassies and Consulates, the Agency provided them with this very cool quick drying plaster and paint kit. He was trained in how to use this kit proficiently. He learned how to match paint colors with his eyeball so that when the patch on the wall or ceiling dried, it would not reveal that someone had burrowed a hole and hid something there. If there were the slightest hint that someone had altered something in the Embassy, his project would have been compromised. So the paint and plaster matching had to be exact.

Tim Allen, eat your heart out.