Fall is when a lot of people finally paint the room they've been meaning to paint since spring. It's also when a lot of people discover that the gray they picked is, on the wall, somehow blue.
Nobody did anything wrong in that story. The chip was just never going to tell you the truth.
Below: why paint changes color between the store and your wall, why stink bugs turn up every October, the sliding door that drags, the lock that sticks in the cold, and the stains that appear on clothes you put away clean.
Reply and tell us: what's the paint color you regret? We read every one.
Why Your Paint Color Looks Different on the Wall
Image: The Home Wire
A paint chip and a painted wall are the same color. They just aren't the same experience of it, and four things change between the two.
The size. A two-inch chip barely shows a color's undertone, the faint blue, green, yellow or pink hiding inside a gray or a beige. Spread that across a 12-foot wall and the undertone gets multiplied by the surface area. That's how a soft gray chip turns into a blue room.
The light. Paint stores are lit bright and overhead. Your living room at 6 p.m. in October is lit by one lamp and whatever's left of the sun. The same paint can look like two different colors in the morning and the evening, or on two walls of the same room.
The neighbors. Colors read against whatever is around them, like the old wall color, the floor and the cabinets. A chip held against a yellowish wall looks different than the same chip on white.
The sheen. Chips are printed flat. If the wall is going in eggshell or satin, that finish bounces more light back at you, so the same color can read a touch lighter where the lamp hits it.
So the fix is to test big, test in your own light, and test for long enough to see the light change. Benjamin Moore lays it out:
Narrow it down with chips, holding each one up against the wall, never looking down at it in your hand.
Put a white border around each sample, or put it on white board, so the current wall color doesn't sway you.
Test a big patch. Their 8-ounce sample covers about 2 feet by 2 feet in two coats, and two coats matter for an accurate color.
Look at it morning to evening, in daylight and lamp light.
Try it on more than one wall, including the darkest corner.
Leave the samples up for a few days. The one you still like on day three is the one.
Why Stink Bugs Show Up Every October
Image: The Home Wire
If brown, shield-shaped bugs are gathering on your siding and window frames right now, they aren't lost. They're looking for somewhere to spend the winter, and your house looks perfect.
Per Penn State Extension, adult brown marmorated stink bugs start searching for winter shelter in September through October. They come to the outside of houses on warm fall days and squeeze in through any gap they find.
The good news first. They won't breed inside your house, and they don't damage it. The bad news is the smell, which they give off when crushed.
Penn State's advice is to keep them out rather than fight them inside:
Caulk the gaps around windows, doors, siding and utility pipes, behind the chimney and under the wood trim at the roofline.
Repair torn window and door screens.
Vacuum up the ones already inside, then empty the canister or bag outdoors, because the smell can linger.
Renters can handle the screens themselves. The outside gaps are a note for the landlord, ideally in writing, before November.
One thing not to do: spray insecticide indoors. Penn State notes that dead stink bugs can attract carpet beetles, which are a bigger problem than the bugs you started with.
The Sliding Door That Drags
Image: The Home Wire
A patio door that takes two hands to open usually isn't broken. A sliding door rides on small wheels called rollers, and when it drags, the track under them is the usual cause. A summer of grit, leaves and dead bugs adds up.
Here's the fix, per Andersen's care guide:
Vacuum the track with the crevice tool.
Scrub it with a soft brush and warm, mild soapy water.
Rinse off the soap with clean water and let it dry.
Put a dry lubricant spray on the rollers, through the adjustment hole if your door has one.
If it still drags, adjust the height. Most doors have an adjustment screw near the bottom corner of the panel. Check your door's instructions for which way raises it.
Notice where the lubricant goes. Andersen says never lubricate the track itself, because then the rollers slide instead of roll.
If a roller won't spin, or it's cracked or worn, cleaning won't save it. Replacement rollers are a part you order from the door's maker, so note the brand stamped on the frame before you call.
Renters can do the first four steps without asking anyone. A roller swap is the landlord's job.
The Lock That Sticks When It Gets Cold
If the front door key starts to catch as the nights get colder, the lock is asking for lubricant. The question is which kind.
The common instinct is a squirt of whatever spray oil is in the garage. Skip it. Inside the cylinder are tiny spring-loaded pins, and a wet oil can hold onto dust until they gum up.
Schlage's service manual for its standard cylindrical locks says to use only graphite or a similar material in the cylinder. A tube of AGS Lock-Ease Graphite Lubricant is $6.49 and lasts for years.
Put a small amount into the keyhole.
Slide the key in and out and turn it several times to spread it.
Wipe the key before it goes back in your pocket.
Do this before the first hard freeze, not on the morning the key won't turn. Go easy, too. Schlage warns that too much graphite leaves the springs no room to move.
The same goes for a padlock on the shed or a stiff car door lock. If yours is a smart lock or an electronic deadbolt, skip all of this and check its manual first, because some makers specify a different lubricant.
Why Clothes You Put Away Clean Come Out Yellow
This is the week the summer clothes go into bins, so it's the week this matters.
It happens every spring. You pull out a white shirt you know you put away clean, and there's a yellow spot on it that wasn't there in October.
Per the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute, spills from juice, beer, soda, tea, coffee and other drinks with sugar or tannin can dry invisible. Over months in storage they oxidize and turn into a stain you can see.
There's a second reason to wash first. The DLI notes that insects feed on stains, so a stained sweater is the one the moths find.
Wash or dry clean everything before it goes into storage, even pieces you only wore once.
Store it in a cool, dry, well-ventilated spot.
Keep it out of direct light. The DLI says even a closet light left on can fade fabric.
Short on closet space? The DLI also points out that your local dry cleaner may offer storage, which hands the whole problem to someone who does it for a living. Whites and pale colors show the yellowing first, so if you only have time to wash part of the pile, start there.
A Paint Sample You Can Move Around the Room
Testing big and in your own light is the whole lesson up top. A brushed-on patch does that, but it stays on one wall and leaves you painting over it.
The one we'd point you to is Samplize peel-and-stick paint samples, at $6.95 for a standard 9 by 15 inch sheet. Shown here in Benjamin Moore White Dove.
Each sheet carries two coats of real paint, not a printed copy, with a backing that peels off and sticks again. So you can move one sample from the sunny wall to the dark corner to the hallway in a single afternoon. Samplize stocks colors from Benjamin Moore, Sherwin-Williams, Behr and Farrow and Ball.
One detail we liked: Benjamin Moore's own store sells a peel-and-stick sample made by Samplize.
We haven't run a room's worth of these ourselves. The specs and price are from Samplize's own listing.
Two caveats. The price adds up, since three candidates for two rooms is six sheets, about $42. And the sample comes in an eggshell finish, so if you're painting flat or semi-gloss, the real wall will catch the light a little differently.
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One quick tap
That's Wednesday: why a color changes on the wall, the October stink bugs, the sliding door track, the right stuff for a cold lock, and the stains that show up in storage.
If you're about to paint, put up the samples this weekend and give them three days.
Forward this to whoever in your house is picking the paint.
See you tomorrow.
The Home Wire
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