The Fifth Gallon

"I will come to love Home Depot."  That was becoming my slogan as we have made quite a few trips from the time we closed on our house in just eight weeks.  During my last post as I was describing the lovely colors of paint we purchased, I noticed that I was charged for an extra gallon of paint.  I wanted to share my customer service experience, for Home Depot passed the test. 

Don't you hate it when you have already left the store, and your nice and cozy in the house, you look at the receipt and say, "shit, they charged me for more  than I bought."  It happens often at the grocery store, but I never go back because I think, "how in the world am I going to prove a couple of dollars?"  Well, it is not just a couple of dollars for a gallon of paint, try $25.00.  Oh no, that is worth contesting.  Then the question is, how do I prove it?

I called Home Depot and spoke with Carlos.  I explained to him that I noticed an extra gallon of paint was charged and how do I go about proving that.  He simply said, "just bring in the receipt, and we will reimburse you."  That's it. 

It turned out that we needed an extra gallon to finish my son's room.  They helped me with the sku number, I mixed my color, and got my paint.  In the end, we both won.  I was a happy customer, and they still got my purchase.  Not only that, they will continue to get my future purchase due to convenience and good customer service.

Thanks for the positive experience with the fifth gallon.

Just How Many Colors

I told myself during my first visit to Home Depot that I should start blogging about our experiences with Home.  I am only seven purchases late and $641.98 short.  Yesterday's  visit was purchase seven for $344.98.  I surely did not allocate a monthly allowance on my excel spreadsheet for monthly bills with its own little line for Home Depot...but with the way we are going, maybe I should. 

Our love for Home Depot began December 16th when...(record scratch, start from the beginning)...Our love for Home Depot began December 10th when we signed the dotted line for our new house.  We were so excited about our new two story house we bought, more space, more comfort, and more trips to Home Depot.  Wait, did not mean to write that last point, as I surely did not think about the amount of trips...UNTIL THEY STARTED HAPPENING. 

When you upgrade to a bigger house, you budget for the mortgage, and think, "No problem, we got this."  Until you take everything that you had in your smaller house and put it in you bigger house and see the reality of, "bigger house means more projects." 

So, our latest project that made us visit Home Depot is painting our children's rooms.  This is the project that struck up the $344.98 ticket.  Now, you think, "how in the world could two 10x10 rooms strike up that big a ticket for paint?"  Well, as the woman next to me in Home Depot commented, "you have a lot of work cut out for you," I thought the same thing when I checked out.  Here is how as I look at the receipt:   5 gallons of Behr's Interior Eggshell for the base colors of two rooms (wait, I only purchased four, so that just reminds me to review the receipts before leaving the store and I have another trip to Home Depot); 7 quarts of Glidden Eggshell Interior to combine the colors of the rainbow; 2 quarts of Glidden Eggshell Interior to combine the Texans colors; paint brushes; rollers; liners; blue tape (I really am not a fan of blue tape, but it was a "just in case" purchase); oh, chalk board paint for the fridge in the garage; two small roller kits for the kids to participate; yard stick for no reason, because it was there; and a Straight Line Laser Kit since we have a lot of stripes to paint.  The story of that tool will be another blog to share if it really works. 

Now I know how blogs work.  Just from that last paragraph alone, I have three more blog stories to share. 

One may question, "Why so much love for Home Depot and not Lowe's?"  Plain and simple, the drive to Home Depot is shorter than Lowe's.  That is it.  There is no loyalty to brand with this Momma.  I am sure you can tell that by my paint purchase.  I bought Behr's and Glidden.  See, Behr's got lucky because Home Depot had this huge book of paint samples for free.  So, we were set on the paint samples for the overall colors of the rooms.  I was willing to pay the extra money for those paint samples, then to get a "close match."  Now, I could have thumbed through the samples for the rainbow colors, but I went in with the chance that Home Depot would already have a packet of rainbow colors already selected, but they didn't.  So, I just went with the cheaper of the two, selected rainbow paint samples from Glidden and purchased their quarts.  Glidden got lucky with the Texans colors because there is no copying of that partnership.  

The projects:

1. My son, Aidan, is a huge Texans fan.  He wanted his whole room red.  We thought that was a bit much, so the prime color is a shade of grey.  We plan to put a big red horizontal stripe across the room with a smaller blue underneath.  We will share pictures.  I wish I would have taken a before shot to show the bare walls.  I have a little one with my daughter, Kyla as she was helping.
2. My daughter, Kyla, wants a rainbow in her room.  That is all she asked for.  I big rainbow.  Her whole room will be painted a shade of blue.  Thank goodness because that is less "cutting in" for me.  We plan to paint a horizontal rainbow border all around her room.  Eventually, I will paint clouds on the ceiling. 

I never thought it would take me over an hour to figure out paint issues.  The attendants in the paint section were very nice.  I don't remember their names, but they were very helpful.  Eric checked me out, and he was entertaining.  He may have overcharged me for one gallon of paint, but that will make a good blog for how Home Depot handles it.