By Nelson Clyde isitjustme@tylerpaper.com

Are you going to get that hole in hall fixed?

Can’t we just hang a picture over it? I said.

She walked away shaking her head. But from time to time the same exchange would take place. It was a standoff. I had relocated the thermostat and there was a 1.5 by 1.75″ hole in the wall. The solution seemed so simple. We would ultimately get it handled but did it have to happen now?

The answer was clear.

There is a show on TV called Barter Kings. The two guys on the show start with something small and trade up for something bigger. A set of pots and pans ultimately becomes a double-decker bus. You get the drift.

The reason I bring this up is that when it comes to fixing things around my house, I can trade a small problem up to a monumental one with almost no effort. This is even with a contractor involved.

We had a pretty busy week and Elizabeth finally won. I started with one contractor on a $50 item. We agreed someone else should do the job.

The next guy I called said over the phone it sounded like a $100 job. We agreed, and I assured him if he would bring what was needed to patch the hole and texture everything else he needed would be here including the paint.

When he arrived, we went to look at my buckets of paint from when the house was painted 10 years ago. We started looking through the buckets and discovered one of them had spilled. That triggered another $40 cleanup from another contractor.

The paint could not be found but we found a bucket with some dried paint that looked like a match and off to the paint store he went. The meter was running.

When he got back, we both had that sick feeling in our guts because the paint did not match. He told me we were up to $170.

We agreed the entire hall would have to be painted to make everything satisfactory for her. We also agreed the job would be another $300 to $340.

I told him we usually keep ambient lighting in the hall and maybe it would pass muster for the short term.

As he was leaving Liz walked in from her errands and asked, “How did it go?”

“We should have hung a picture over it” I said as I walked out the door.