The homeowner who asked me to match her flower pot brick color

Last Tuesday in Austin I was repointing an old chimney and the lady came out holding this tiny cracked flower pot, saying she needed the mortar to look exactly like it. I tried to explain that matching a fired ceramic color to lime mortar is like asking a cat to bark, but she kept insisting until I pulled out my sample bag. She looked at the gray vs. her peach pot and went silent for a minute, then asked if I could just paint it instead. Has anyone else had a customer swear a brick job should match something that has nothing to do with brick?

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dylanbell21d ago

Is it possible she wasn't really after the color at all, but just wanted some kind of control over the finished look? I've noticed homeowners who fixate on weird matches like that are usually nervous about the whole job, maybe they had a bad experience before or they just can't picture the end result. So the flower pot becomes this weird anchor for them, like if you can match that impossible thing, then you must know what you're doing everywhere else. Instead of arguing about pigments, I've started asking what they're really worried about, and half the time it's something totally different, like drainage or how long the work will last. Once we talk about that, the pot suddenly doesn't matter anymore.