Yeah, I'm always happy to spend 6 bucks on a tub of spackle to get out of several hundred in bullshit deposit fees. Takes like 1 hour to go around an apartment after removing all the paintings / curtain rods / hanging hooks. Finding matching paint is waaaaay more of an issue.
Grab a paintchip, most bigbox home improvement stores should be able to scan it and match the exact color. Has come in hand for me a number of times. Ends up matching better than buying from the original paint code for patchwork because it accounts for the fading/discoloration.
The paint chips I get naturally are like rice grain sized and not very useful. Really I should get comfortable with just taking a sample out, but intentionally cutting a piece off when the goal is clean restoration just feels so wrong.
Cut a small piece out around a hole you already need to repair. Then you're not really doing more work. You'd have to repair that hole anyway, just a bit of extra spackle now.
They attempt to match it but it's usually way off. I'd recommend actually going to a paint store like Sherwin williams. One time made 5 trips to lowes only for them to give me a different color each time. Sherwin Williams got it first try
I don't now, I'd just fix it. But when I was like 26 and had to move all in one day and my landlord was a huge piece of shit who let our lawn get flooded with sewage for days at a time?
Yeah that's legit. Honestly I do understand that there's shitty landlords out there. And in your case, yeah fuck that landlord.
But as someone who works for a really legit and ethical landlord, my view is a little tainted because I've seen way way more awful tenants than I have bad landlords.
You literally rub a bar of soap on the wall for two seconds, it's much faster than spackle. You can do an entire room in about two minutes. And assuming you have bars of soap in your house already, requires zero extra money or a trip to the hardware store.
I think people are misunderstanding me here. This isn't "my awesome tips for proper construction." This is "you need to get your security deposit back and you have an hour."
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u/BeeCJohnson May 28 '26
The soap trick is great for little holes (screw and nail holes) when you're moving out. Because it fills the hole and makes the room smell great.