Oops Paint - Leftovers of the Painting World

Do leftovers exists in the paint world? Oh, yes they do! I’ve painted nearly my entire house with them! Leftovers are the paint that was mixed and rejected at the paint store, (more commonly referred to as “oops paint”) or the remnants of your own past projects. My personal collection started with 11 gallons of paint that we acquired when we first moved into our house. It is as though someone was planning to paint every surface, got started … and gave up. Boy am I glad they did! It would’ve been a huge waste of time to paint the interior of a house white before someone as exuberant as me moved in. I would go crazy in an all white house! I need color! Big color! The more saturated the better…eggplant accent walls, anise entry way, blood-red half-bath, navy blue living room, and my favorite: a peacock-inspired master bedroom. (That’s right: purple, teal and green – delish!)

An Adventure in Landscaping

Knollwood, the neighborhood where we live, is one of the hilliest neighborhoods in Topeka. Stacked stone retaining walls line three sides of our property. The wall on the southern side of the yard  is less than two feet. With the Neighbors wooden fence set in a couple of feet, it serves a dual purpose as a decorative planting bed. When we took ownership of our home six years ago, the back yard was completely overgrown. This wall was barely visible due to being completely covered with English ivy. Clearing off the Ivy, we discovered roots from the surrounding trees and bushes had completely destroyed the wall.

Starting at the Westernmost end of the wall, we worked together intending to simply "clean it up" a bit. Dennis worked ahead of me, removing the ivy and volunteer trees so I could re-stack the stones that had fallen. We quickly realized that a rebuild was in order. So I began pulling the rocks down and digging out the dirt behind them. Working a few feet at a time, I piled the limestone rocks on top of the bed and project went pretty quickly.

The Water Feature

What a challenge this project was. Not only did we have no idea how to take care of the deep concrete hole outside our front door, but nobody we consulted seemed to know what to do with it either. Dennis and I spent many hours researching garden shows, specialty pond stores, and swimming pool companies. While a great number of visitors were sure we should just fill it in, we were determined to find a plan to make it amazing.


After three years of caring for the concrete hole, I finally decided on an idea I was excited about. It including a paint a mural, which made the project more like two, but I was hopeful it would only take a couple weeks.