Behind every beautiful “after” photo is a hard-learned lesson (or three). In this summer’s series, “Gutted,” renovators share the biggest mistakes they made on a recent project, how they fixed them, and more wisdom they gained along the way.
As soon as Renee Bruner, a handyman from Texas, saw Kirsten Dunst’s kitchen in Architectural summary, Bruner knew exactly what color she would paint her own kitchen. “It had all these really deep reds and purples and a very dramatic marble island,” Bruner recalls. “I loved it all because it combined old with new, which is what I try to do in my house.” After getting rid of the roach-infested cabinets, broken dishwasher, and chipped countertops, Bruner tediously applied Portola Paints’ Meritage Roman clay to the walls of her kitchen. With a trowel in hand, she applied layer after layer of the plum-red plaster, even going so far as to paint the outlets as well. That, as she would quickly learn, was a grave mistake.
“I didn’t want people to stare at the outlets, I wanted them to stare at the marble or the lighting,” Bruner says, revealing her thought process. “So I originally thought I would do exactly what I’ve done in other rooms: When I don’t want something to stick out, I camouflage it by making it blend in with the surface.” She’d seen other people on social media paint over their outlets, so she assumed she was safe. But when Bruner told her Instagram followers what she’d done, she received a flurry of DMs pointing out that it was actually a safety hazard. If any bits of Roman clay were to break off and get stuck inside the ports, it could cause a fire. She decided to change her mind immediately.
Bruner first tried searching for reddish-purple plugs online, but nothing came up. The shades closest to Meritage were brown and black, so she bought five different plugs on Amazon to test. She eventually ordered six brown plugs in total and one black one (for the island) through Legrand’s Amazon store. They matched perfectly.
Legrand Radiant Decorative Duplex Outlet with Self-Test GFCI, Amazon
$28
$15
Buy now
“One of the things I love most about these GFCI outlets is that they don’t have a green light on all the time, like other brands. Instead, it only comes on if there’s a problem,” Bruner says. Hoping to educate other first-time renovators, she revealed her solution via an Instagram Reel. And she’s not shy about pointing out her mistakes — each one, she says, helps her become a better handyman.
“Three years ago, I didn’t know how to do any of this. I make mistakes all the time and you learn to overcome them,” she says. “So people really feel like it’s something achievable rather than something limited, which is what I thought about renovation before I started doing it myself.”
