Was he trying to be nice?

Under the post Stone Fiasco we got this comment:

Mr. Shawn said... Hmm... your stone doesn't look so bad in relation to the rest of the new house! If in real life it does stand out that much - instead of replacing it - you can hire an artist to go in there and paint portions of each stone so that it blends in more with the house. Basically, pain each stone (or wash it or something), so that the colors balance out more and blend in more.

First we don't know Mr. Shawn. We didn't expect anyone to read the blog other than us really, so this was a bit surprising. Then we read the comment. "Hmm... your stone doesn't look so bad in relation to the rest of the new house!" This could be read, in comparison to the rest of your house the stone is not all that bad - or in other words the rest of your house sucks so badly the stone looks good. OK, we had not looked at that way. If we had not already had the stone removed we would have felt better about the stone..?.. We take solace that "in relation to" is not exactly the same as "in comparison to". As for the suggestion of painting the stone he obviously does not know about Tierny's tyranny -- a reference to the guy that runs the HOA and approves (more appropriately said “overlords”) any changes to the outside of the house. But we could have had a big getting our house stoned painting party.