Seniors rushed to their local Sherwin-Williams and Home Depot in search of paint, but many walked away empty-handed. Due to the sudden surge in demand, stores in the area quickly ran out of paint for seniors who wanted to decorate their parking spaces.

The Glen Carbon Sherwin-Williams contacted nearby locations to aid with the demand, but were not met with much luck.

“We weren’t expecting the amount of orders that came in, so I think we ended up calling essentially every other [Sherwin-Williams] store in the Midwest division,” Caroline, a local Sherwin-Williams worker, said. “We tried to get as much as we could.”

Having no other options, the store had to accept its inability to meet the demand of the student requests.

“By the time the deadline came, there was nowhere else for us to pull from,” Caroline said. “As a company, we basically just ran out of everything.”

Sherwin-Williams was not the only local company that had to turn away students. Other paint stores, such as Lowe’s and Home Depot, experienced similar issues. 

When the Granite City Sherwin-Williams got word of the paint struggle, they decided to help by donating a five-gallon bucket of white paint to the school, prior to running out themselves.

“Once they finally ran out of paint, we unfortunately couldn’t really adapt and change anything,” senior Luke Slater said.

With the paint shortage, many seniors found themselves having to either accept defeat or drive dozens of miles to ensure their spot successfully got painted. 

“All the paint in a 40-mile radius was sold out for the type of paint we needed,” senior Brayden Fairburn said. “I called my grandpa who lives about 60 miles away in Missouri and asked if he could order it for me … I woke up at 6:00 a.m. the day we started painting for an hour-and-a-half drive there and back just for the paint.”

Fairburn had to drive to Washington, Mo. for his desired paint. Many students such as Fairburn found the whole situation to be a hassle.

But not all seniors had the ability to drive to neighboring towns for paint, meaning that painting some parking spots was out of the question. One senior even requested a refund because she couldn’t access any paint. 

The EHS Student Advisory Committee, which coordinated the event, started to ask that seniors donate their leftover paint to their peers.

“They were allowed to donate it … it worked for a lot of kids because we did use a lot of donated paint and I think we got about 20 quarts donated in general from people,” Slater said.

Despite the several donations and leftover supplies, seniors like Fairburn were still frustrated with the area-wide paint shortage. 

“It was definitely annoying with the fact I had to do this all for some paint,” Fairburn said. “The cost, fatigue from [the drive] and other problems we had to encounter were not worth it.”