On Sep 5, 11:58 pm, "JoeSpareBedroom" wrote:
"Robert Allison" wrote in message

news:1vJDi.4578$J96.1147@trnddc02...





Bernardo Gui wrote:
On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 11:25:56 -0700, DerbyDad03
wrote:

The other day SWMBO says to me "I'd like those Bordeaux colored
shutters that I saw at Lowes."

So I take the new shutters over to the paint counter and asked for a
quart of matching paint for the trim. The guy in the red vest tries to
find the color Bordeaux in his computer. No go. He tries a couple of
paint chips but nothing matches. He tries to hold the 48" shutters up
to the little tiny color matching computer lens - the resulting
formula is not even close. "Sorry, I don't think I can match it."

I drive down the road to a local paint store and bring the shutters
in. The guy behind the counter grabs a keychain full of little
miniature shutters and finds one that's fairly close. "Let's start
with this and we'll tweak it from there." He mixes the formula found
on the back of the mini-shutter, brings it over and declares it "too
purple". A couple of drops of this and that and he hits it perfect on
the next try.

When I told him what happened at Lowes he said the computers don't
work very well with dark colors and the guys behind the counter are
too lazy to try and match the paint manually. Guess where I'm going
the next time I need paint?

You get what you pay for (most of the time). You were a customer with
highly specific needs, and you should go to a higher-priced store to
get the attention you wanted.

Of course, you'd be a knucklehead to go to that same place for a can
of standard-color paint that you can easily find on one of the
gazillions of paint sample cards at Lowes.

Bernardo

I would be a fool then. With the automatic discount that I get at the
real paint stores, plus the higher quality paint that I get, I come out
ahead every time. Plus, it only takes a minute or two unless I come in
when there are alot of customers. Even then, it is usually MUCH faster
than the big box stores. So I save money AND time. I guess I am just a
fool for economy.

The real fools are the ones that think that Home Depot and Lowes are
cheaper.
Robert Allison

They're the fools who don't put any value at all on their own time. Do it
right the first time, and you have more hours to spend with your family, go
fishing, or just sit in the yard watching the clouds go by. When I bought my
first house, I was fortunate enough to have a hardware store two blocks
away. The owner and his wife knew how to fix every damned thing, from
plaster to electrical to plumbing to painting. I'd walk in, learn something,
buy the right thing the first time, and be done with the job fast. They'd
introduce my kid to the store's official cat and keep him busy while I
concentrated on hardware.

Those places still exist, but in a nation of idiots, advertising is king,
and too many people never find their local hardware store because Home
Depot's ads are bigger and more frequent

I'm lucky enough to have one of those close by. I walk in and tell
the owner what I'm trying to do and he wanders back into the dark
cluttered aisles and returns with exactly what I need along with good
explanations and advice.
Maybe his mark up is higher than Lowe's. It's not worth it to check.
Peace of mind is priceless.