Our new office is a lot of things: cheap, roomy, comfortable, close to our homes – and until recently partially painted a disgusting shade of pea-soup green. We know and love the previous tenants, but this is one of those paint colors you assume was picked while under the influence. It had to go. So while we were waiting for Comcast, we figured we could quickly paint over the offending wall. Having taped everything off, thrown down a couple of tarps, and we got to work.
Since we were putting cheap white paint over a colored wall – we assumed two coats would be necessary. After the first coat we noticed that some old looking water damage on the wall were still as plain as day. We tried a second coat. Perhaps simply putting more paint could be the answer. Alas, our efforts to simply cover up the problem were to no avail.
A two minute drive to the Benjamin Moore store a few blocks down Leary, followed by a two minute conversation with someone who actually knew something about paint was all we needed. A quick coat of oil-based primer, followed by another coat of the super-cheap flat latex I got at the Home Depot – and everything looked great.
I have worked construction and have painted countless houses and apartments over the years – so I was confident enough to just plow ahead and slap some paint on the walls. It wasn’t until I was confronted with a problem I had never seen before that I even entertained the notion of consulting with a subject matter expert. That consultation made all the difference. If I had taken the 10 minutes it would have taken to do that before I started, I could have saved a few hours.
While it might not be very glamorous, we really appreciated that guy at the paint store and we were very happy to have him as a resource. He saved us time and money, and shepherded us to a result we likely would not have gotten had we only had big-box generalists to rely on. Of course, we should understand this concept better than most people because we are subject matter expects. We perform the exact same function when it comes to SEO and SEM.
Here is to hoping you’re smart enough to reach out to an expert before being confronted with the indisputable proof of the error of your ways.