The Touch-Up That Became a Whole Wall
Why this matters
This shop diagnosed the problem correctly on the first callback, fixed what it had diagnosed, and the wall still showed. That is the uncomfortable kind of case: the reasoning was right and it was not enough, because the thing being repaired was not the six holes. It was a wall that had changed since it was painted, and nothing on the ticket had ever said what kind of repair the customer was getting. By the end, the finish work had cost the shop more hours than the job it was attached to.
The original job
A low-voltage installer took down an old wall-mounted television and its bracket in a living room, pulled the old cable that had been run through two holes in the wall, and mounted a new, smaller set on the opposite wall. That left six holes in the old wall: four anchor holes about 1/4 in across where the bracket's lag anchors had been, and two cable holes about 3/4 in across. Before patching, the installer looked into each cable hole with a flashlight to confirm nothing remained in the cavity but the low-voltage cable he had already pulled, and that no line-voltage box or cable was within reach of the patch.
He filled the four anchor holes with lightweight spackle, backed the two cable holes with a small patch and filled them, sanded flush, and asked the customer for paint. The customer brought a can from the garage labeled with the wall's color name. He touched up each spot with a small brush. The whole finish step took about 0.75 hour, and the ticket read "patched 6 holes, touched up with customer's paint." Nothing on the estimate had mentioned the wall at all.
The first callback: six shiny spots
Two days later the customer called. In the afternoon light from the front window, the old TV wall showed six spots, each one visibly shinier than the wall around it and a shade lighter.
The shop sent the installer's lead back, and he made the right diagnosis in a few minutes. He looked at the can: same color name as the wall, but the sheen on the label was satin. The wall was eggshell, a lower sheen. The customer then remembered that the can was from the kitchen, which had been painted the same color in satin because it gets wiped down. A satin touch-up on an eggshell wall reflects more light, and the difference is strongest when light skims across the wall, which is exactly what the front window did every afternoon. See related: Why Paint Touch-Ups Flash.
That is a correct diagnosis. The wrong sheen was the reason the spots looked shiny, and it was the only cause anyone could see.
The correct fix, and what it did not fix
With the circuit for a receptacle on that wall switched off at the panel and the receptacle confirmed dead with a tester proved on a live outlet before and after, the lead took a dime-sized chip of the wall paint from behind its cover plate, where it would never be seen, scraping well clear of the device's terminals. The plate went back on, the circuit was turned back on, and the receptacle was checked live with the tester before he left. He had a match mixed in eggshell from the chip. See related: How to Get a Color Match From a Paint Chip. Back at the house, he did everything a careful painter would: sanded the satin spots back lightly, spot-primed each patch so the spackle and the old film would take the paint the same way, and applied the eggshell match with a small roller of similar nap to the one the wall had been rolled with, feathering each spot outward so there was no hard edge.
The spots were much better. They were not gone. In the same afternoon light, all six still showed as faint patches, now slightly different in color rather than in shine. The second visit took about 0.75 hour.
So the diagnosis was right and the repair was right, and the problem came back. Two things that had nothing to do with the sheen were still true:
The wall had faded. The living room had been painted about six years earlier. The old TV wall faced the front window and had six years of sunlight on it. Paint color shifts with light exposure and with cleaning, and a new batch matched from a chip matches the chip, which was taken from behind an outlet cover where the paint had been protected from light. The match was accurate to what the wall used to be.
The wall around the spots had a different history from the spots. Even with the same paint, a fresh film over a primed patch is a different surface from a six-year-old film that has been dusted and wiped. The new film has slightly different texture and absorbs light slightly differently. Spot-priming and feathering reduce that difference; they do not remove it. On a large unbroken wall with light skimming across it, the eye finds six small rectangles of difference easily.
Neither of these is a mistake anyone made. They are what touch-up paint does on an aged wall, and the only finish that removes both is new paint over the whole surface to its natural edges, the corners and the ceiling line, where a slight difference from the next wall reads as intended. See related: Invisible, Blended or Acceptable: The Three Grades of Finish Repair.
Why a third touch-up would not have worked
There was a natural pull toward one more attempt: a slightly darker match to allow for the fade, a lighter roller, wider feathering. The lead talked the shop out of it, for a reason worth keeping. Each attempt adds another film to the same six spots, and each film makes them more different from the wall, not less: more build, more edges, another sheen variation to chase. A touch-up that has failed twice on an aged wall is evidence about the wall. The honest move is to stop touching up and tell the customer what the real options are.
The options he gave:
- Live with it. Six faint patches visible in afternoon light, sound and flat. That is an acceptable-grade repair, and nothing was wrong with it except that nobody had ever told the customer that was what the job included.
- Repaint the wall, corner to corner, in eggshell, from a fresh mix of the chip match. About 4.0 hours including cutting in along the ceiling and the trim, and one gallon of paint. That reaches blended or better on that wall, with any difference from the adjacent walls falling at the corners.
The customer chose the repaint.
How the cost was settled
This was the part the shop had no paper to stand on. The estimate had been for the TV work, about 3.0 hours, and it said nothing about holes, patching, paint or what the wall would look like. The installer had said "I'll touch it up for you" in the way techs do, and the customer had reasonably heard that the wall would look the way it had before. Nothing in writing set a grade, excluded a full-wall repaint, or said that a touch-up on an aged wall may show.
The shop's owner looked at it the way a customer would. The shop had made the holes, offered to fix them, and done so twice without saying the fix had limits. It agreed to do the repaint labor at no charge. The customer offered to pay for the gallon of paint, since the wall would be fresh, and the shop accepted. The finish work on the job came to 0.75 + 0.75 + 4.0 = 5.5 hours, against 3.0 hours of billed TV work: the unbilled finish work was about 1.8 times the job it came from.
The repaint was done on a third visit, and the customer signed off in the same afternoon light that had started the whole thing.
The estimate template change
The owner traced the loss to one missing line and changed the shop's estimate template so it could not happen again. Every job that will leave holes, cuts or removed fixtures in a painted surface now carries a finish line with the grade written in:
FINISH REPAIR - holes from removed bracket/cable
Included: fill, sand, prime, touch up with paint
the customer supplies, after we check
its sheen and color on a hidden spot
Grade: ACCEPTABLE - sound, flat, sealed;
touch-ups may show as faint patches
in light that skims the wall
Option: repaint full wall corner to corner,
hours quoted on request
Excluded: full-wall repaint unless chosen above
Customer initials: ____
Three rules came with it:
- Check the can before using it. Read the label for sheen, ask which room it came from, and try it on a spot nobody sees (inside a closet on the same wall, behind a cover plate) before touching up anything visible. A satin can on an eggshell wall is found in one minute, not two days.
- Say the sentence out loud. "Touch-up paint on a wall that has been up for a few years usually shows a little in some light. If that would bother you, the way to avoid it is painting the whole wall." Said before the first hole is filled, it is a choice. Said after, it is an excuse.
- Stop at two. If a touch-up has been redone once and still shows, the next visit does not touch up again; it quotes the wall.
What would have made the first fix enough
If the wall had been painted within the last year or so, or had been in a room with little direct light, the chip match in the right sheen would very likely have been the end of it, because the wall and the chip would still have been close to the same color. If the customer had kept the original can of the living-room paint, the color would have been closer still, though the fade and the aged film would have remained. And if the patches had been on a wall broken up by furniture and art rather than a large open wall where the TV used to hang, faint differences would probably never have been noticed. On this wall, with this light and this age, the repaint was the only repair that matched what the customer thought they had been promised.
References
- See related: Why Paint Touch-Ups Flash
- See related: How to Get a Color Match From a Paint Chip
- See related: How to Touch Up Paint So the Patch Does Not Flash
- See related: How to Write the Finish-Repair Line on an Estimate
- See related: Invisible, Blended or Acceptable: The Three Grades of Finish Repair