What Stupid Things Have You Done to Save a Few Bucks?

This weekend, one of the many projects we tackled around the house was to make use of a wall in our kitchen by painting a section with chalkboard paint. The kids would love it, it would give them something fun to do while I cook, and it would make good use of the big old blank wall.

Hubby went to Home Depot and bought some chalkboard paint and came home to get started. He taped the area he wanted to paint – low enough so the kids could draw and reaching high enough for a space that only he and I can reach to write down things for the household. Then he got painting. It took 3 coats, so the project went from Friday afternoon until completion Saturday morning.

After it was dry, the tape was ready to come of so we’d have a perfect beautiful chalkboard square on our wall. I started peeling, and you wouldn’t believe it, but not just the wall paint started to come off, but the drywall started to peel. Oh it was ugly and disastrous. I instantly turned to hubby and asked “is this painter’s tape?” He tried to tell me it was, but I knew before I even asked that it was not. Painter’s tape does not rip apart walls.

I would excuse the mistake, maybe…MAYBE if he had just not wanted to drive all the way across town to Home Depot for a $2 roll of tape. But you’ll recall I mentioned he was already there getting the paint. And chose not to spend 2 more dollars to get the correct tape.

He wanted to save $2 and instead ended up having to put up wood trim around the chalkboard to cover the drywall disaster. The trim cost almost $20. It looks really nice now and it worked out okay in the end. I may have actually requested trim anyway, but the fact that he wanted to save a couple dollars and then was forced to spend 10 times that to fix it is still amusing to me. There is frugal and then there is just dumb.

So…I am sure you all can join in my stupid frugality fest and share some stories about you or people you know making dumb decisions to save a few bucks that end up costing much more in the end. So, let’s hear it! Share your stupid frugal stories with me.