Yipes–stripes!… Remember the first time you painted your bedroom, starting with a tiny blue or yellow chip? And on the wall it became bowl-me-over blue or yelping yellow? Now picture painting a full house – that’s scary. Our kitchen faces the side of the garage. That side became our test site, as I brought home quarts of potential colors, layering sample stripes for eyeballing at different times of day. Our painting follows PB’s hardware store history. In 1985, Jackie and Archie Ruyker at PB Hardware on Garnet and Dawes helped me mix what might have been the first peach-colored house in PB (“Southwest” was in back then). By 1997 they were gone, so Home Improver ACE Hardware on Grand supplied the two tones of gray with teal-green trim. Since Greg was never thrilled with the peach and I was likewise lukewarm about gray, we agreed on new colors: a soft, warm teddy bear brown with chocolate trim and deep teal along the roofline. Not too dark a brown or it would make the house warmer, but not puny either. The Paint Magician… Enter Hammer and Nails ACE Hardware on Turquoise Street which now carries ACE paint, and Bill Walby, the helpful, patient paint manager – or paint magician, as I called him. Bill’s worked in hardware stores large and small since 1980 but prefers our PB neighborhood crowd. “I love this job – everybody is very friendly, low-key,” he said. “I’d say 99 percent of people have a problem. They need personal attention and I’m good at that. We take them over, show them the product and explain how to use it.” In case you have a sample color, their paint-matching scanner will help. Hint: Be sure it’s at least a two-inch circle of solid color. Additional hints: • “Purdy” brushes are expensive and worth every penny. • A four-inch roller helps with narrow wood insets. • Daylight sure changes colors, especially browns. • The job always takes longer than you planned. Munch, munch… There was a fierce competition between termites and the dry-rot guys to shred our entryway. Our friends Jose and Imelda replaced a dozen eight-foot-long rafters, prepped surfaces and painted upper areas. My jobs were the (mostly unseen) east and west walls and coordinating the (far more than planned) colors. Threatening to imprison my car was our 46-year-old, 400-pound wooden garage door. A new steel, segmented (safe!) door that looks like wood completed our makeover. Now I can go to the beach.