Hear the words “treasure map” and it conjures up an image of a well-weathered parchment yellowed by the years.

It doesn’t bring to mind a color that is a muted turquoise blue tempered with a touch of gray in the pigment.

Yet, that is the color the marketing geniuses at Behr Paint gave the moniker ‘treasure map” to for part of its “cool” color offerings.

Granted, it’s not as far out there as the name “fuzzy slippers” another purveyor of paint gave a somewhat light shade of blue.

There is no rhyme of reason to the name of many house paints.

And judging by how disconnected some are, one must assume many paints are named by people who have inhaled a bit too many paint fumes.

A perfect example is “stolen kiss.”

The name brings the color red to mind.

Guess again.

It’s a white with a slight hint of faint pink.

At least “stolen kiss” is in the ball park in terms of a name although it is definitely out in left field.

Consider the paint color dubbed “rumor.”

The paint that carries its name is a reddish brown.

We’ve come a long way from when there were just a few basic colors premixed at the factory and sold in hardware stores.

I get why we may need 101 different blue options to consider before we paint a house, but some color options are plain nuts.

Back in 1994 when I bought an S-10 Blazer from Tradeway Chevrolet, whose new car lot is where In-and-Out Burger is today, I was under the impression it was white.

A year later when I wanted to touch up some places where the paint had been chipped, I went to the dealership parts department.

When I asked for white touch up paint, I was informed General Motors had 16 whites.

I discovered there were several different whites used in the production of 1992 S-10 Blazers.

My vehicle, I found out, was painted with “frost”.

It didn’t look any different than “snow white” that was used that year but appeared to be a tad more muted than “snow ball.”

White, by the way, is the No. 1 color for cars, edging out black. Various research puts those two basic choices each in the 20 percent range of cars sold each year.

Enough about cars.

If you haven’t figured it out, I’m in the process of painting the inside of my house.

The last time I did any painting, a gallon cost a little north of $20. That was back in 2010 when I painted the exterior. Today it will set you back roughly $50.

It might interest you to know that painting the inside of your house was frowned upon in Colonial America in 1630.

That is when outraged and self-righteous citizens in Charlestown — according to several sites belonging to paint firms that provide a historical perspective to the art of transforming sheet rock, wood, plaster, et al into one homogenous color — had a pastor charged with the sacrilegious crime of painting the interior of his home.

Painting the interior of one’s home was viewed by the pilgrims as a sign of vanity and “a sign the owners enjoyed life too much.”

Of course, they only enjoyed it if someone else did the painting.

You also had to have lots of money.

That’s because making paint was a long laborious process that required pushing a large granite ball back and forth in a trough to grind white lead and oil. The result was a lot of time invested making the paint astronomically unaffordable except for the rich.

Given Behr is hawking some paint that is way past the $50 gallon mark, perhaps they’re bringing back the good old days in terms of pricing.

I’ve never have liked the color of my walls.

The agent Wells Fargo in 2008 hired to sell a couple hundred foreclosures in the Manteca-Stockton area hired a pair of handymen to improve what they deemed were out-of-date properties that were supposedly harder to sell.

The two clowns he hired made Ed Dawson of Green Acres fame seem like an Old World craftsmen.

They used a dirty looking off white paint that I assume was the cheapest they could buy.

And they painted it like they hated their jobs.

Carol Bragan, who was my buyers’ agent, got the Stockton agent to get the crew to repaint it two additional times. Each time he begrudging dropped by and agreed the two guys did a hideous job as in failing to cover the previous paint job.

When I had a new electrical panel installed along with remodeling the kitchen and the bathroom in 2011, there was some painting done but I didn’t do it.

It involved painting the bathroom walls above where I had gray tile installed, as well as the ceiling, a deep gray.

Cabinets in the kitchen were painted black.

Given I want to paint all walls and ceilings the same color and I also had earth tone tile flooring and backsplash in the kitchen with laminate wooden floors and stained baseboard everywhere else, I needed a color that would go with all of that.

“Treasure map” fit the bill.

I’m now two weeks into what will likely end up being a two-month project, if not longer.

Some of it has to do with my painting time is 9 p.m. Saturday to 5 a.m. Sunday. (Who said a 68-year-old doesn’t know how to live it up on a Saturday night?)

But the real kicker is the amount of cutting.

I live in a California flat-top. That means the roof is at a slight pitch.

It’s not enough of an angle to use shingles on the outside and its too shallow for an attic.

That said the previous owner of a nearby house who installed central air had a ceiling put in. Łet’s just say at 5-foot-11 that I feel perilously close to the ceiling.

My house still has the exposed beam ceiling. Every 30 inches there is a beam.

Top that off with the fact vast segments of the ceiling have what might best be described as paint textured by heat blistering given it is the direct underside of the  roof, it creates an adventure in painting.

It was also the reason I wanted to go with one color as it eliminated the need to do a lot of cutting.

I paint overnight because it fits in best with my schedule.

But it also is much more pleasant to do so.

That’s because hot air rises. And with no air conditioning, painting the ceiling when much of the beams are best painted with a brush can become pretty intense.

Of course, new paint will mean new blinds.

I learned shortly after getting married that one small home improvement triggers countless others even when you buy a home deemed perfect.

In our case, it was a new set of cookware. That lead to new dishes. Then removing wallpaper. Next came painting. Then flooring upgrades and finally new window treatments.

We’ve come a long way since 1630.

No longer is painting the interior of your house expensive and sacrilegious.

Now it’s expensive and crazy.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com