Thank you Oops Section in the Paint Dept and a long ramble of paint
The idea of cheaping out on paint in a very poor one, yet one we all have. We watch these DIY shows on HGTV that say they bought $100 worth of paint for an entire house and voila! Instant Make over! Yeah, well, thats not quite so accurate. When youre thinking of painting you usually forget all the little things that quickly add up in wallet damage.
First things first, you need to clean those walls. Seriously folks, how often do you clean your walls? Not often and especially not unless theres a direct stain, like jelly on the kitchen wall. Dont ask, lets just say Pax is very liberal in his jelly use. So back to cleaning, you need this stuff called TSP. Great stuff! Though I went with the TSP alternative because you didnt need to rinse it. Its hard enough wiping down walls, why go over it twice?
With that TSP you need buckets to put it in, you also should be wearing gloves. No, you dont HAVE to, but ouch this stuff is harsh! If you are washing the ceiling you might want one of those handy sponge mops. So now we have buckets, TSP, gloves, mops on our list...and we havent even painted yet!
Prior to painting you have to prime, really, you have to. Why put in al that work only to have it chipping right off because paint doesnt stick to paint all that well? We purchased 2 gallon size buckets of water based Killz which was affordable at $24.95 each. So far one bucket has gotten us through the kitchen, hall and living room. Of course we are forced to put on many many many coats due to the doodles and sponge painting the previous owners liked. If we didnt need to do that I feel pretty confident that 2 gallon bucket would last through 3 rooms.
Now the paint. Oh the arguements people will get into reharding the type of paint. There are die hard advocates of Benjamin Moore, experienced users of Ralph Lauren, overall the only thing most agreed on is that Behr sucks. Which is a bummer because Behr definiately has a more user friendly assortment of color swatches and design books listed for free at Home Depot.
We are going to go with Benjamin Moore for the kitchen and the living room, which will be a lemon yellow and a spring green respectively. What made the decision was mostly access to paint samples on the day we decided we need to know NOW! This is probably a foolish way to decide, but noone ever said we were smart. Down the road from our house is a nice small independent paint store that sold samples of BM paint. The goal was to compare two colors per rom, kitchen, living room, bedroom.
We bought 6 samples for a whopping $25, yikes! Back home we were able to see how the colors looked on the walls, but I will say that I was extreemly dissapointed in the limited amount of samples that BM has, something like 200 out of their 6000 paint colors. The two brown/beiges we choose for the living room were terrible, the darker one looking like something you would find in a diaper! Out of the two kitchen yellows, one barely looked yellow at all! Instead it seemed like a cream, truly aggitating when I think of how much that stupid little bottle was! For our bedroom we had chosen a pale blue and a spring green, but decided to throw those colors on the living room wall after how terrible the browns looked.
The light blue was nice and I wouldnt have minded using that, though that would make both living rooms blue, which makes me think that we would refer to that side of the house as the blue wing. The green was initially startling, but very compelling. Its such a pretty green. It will require a bit of work to match furniture and decoration, but it will be well worth it I think. Our current blue furniture, what there is of it, will fit happily in the blue room :)
I did try putting that light blue down in our basement bedroom, but it looked blah and washed out. While we have a window down there, its technically under the deck so the amount of sunlight is limited. I was a bit frustrated because I didnt want to be stuck buying more pricy samples and I was begining to doubt the integrity of buying expensive quality paint for a room that is never going to look great. My salvation came in the form of the oops section at Lowes where I located a taupe/beige color in eggshell finish by Valspar for $5! That'll do pig, that'll do! I know I can liven up the room in other ways and saving myself $45 on the paint is motivating for sure.
Well that was quite a segway from the list of wallet ransackage. Besides primer we had to buy rollers, roller pads, trays, handle extensions, edging pads and drop cloth. havent used the drop cloth yet, instead Ive lined most of the house in newspaper. It has an odd puppy training feel to it and the ink gets all over! The edging pads were something I was curious about, having read many reviews from the UK advocating them. They are awesome! Very convenient to use, especially in high corner places. They apply a thin coat, which is the only drawback, but Im thinking of buying the next size up to use during actual painting. Has anyone used them? If not, did you use rollers? What brand of pads did you buy, cheapies or ? Or were you a brush fanatic?
Now I need to find a decent shade of white that I can use through the house on the windows and trim. It needs to coordinate with the vibrant colors we have without being too bright. Some of the other rooms we have will likely not be fully painted but the built in shelving really needs it.
So far I think we have spent $125 in supplies and prep alone, that may be an over exaggration since Im not looking at the receipts, to be honest Im a bit afraid to...
First things first, you need to clean those walls. Seriously folks, how often do you clean your walls? Not often and especially not unless theres a direct stain, like jelly on the kitchen wall. Dont ask, lets just say Pax is very liberal in his jelly use. So back to cleaning, you need this stuff called TSP. Great stuff! Though I went with the TSP alternative because you didnt need to rinse it. Its hard enough wiping down walls, why go over it twice?
With that TSP you need buckets to put it in, you also should be wearing gloves. No, you dont HAVE to, but ouch this stuff is harsh! If you are washing the ceiling you might want one of those handy sponge mops. So now we have buckets, TSP, gloves, mops on our list...and we havent even painted yet!
Prior to painting you have to prime, really, you have to. Why put in al that work only to have it chipping right off because paint doesnt stick to paint all that well? We purchased 2 gallon size buckets of water based Killz which was affordable at $24.95 each. So far one bucket has gotten us through the kitchen, hall and living room. Of course we are forced to put on many many many coats due to the doodles and sponge painting the previous owners liked. If we didnt need to do that I feel pretty confident that 2 gallon bucket would last through 3 rooms.
Now the paint. Oh the arguements people will get into reharding the type of paint. There are die hard advocates of Benjamin Moore, experienced users of Ralph Lauren, overall the only thing most agreed on is that Behr sucks. Which is a bummer because Behr definiately has a more user friendly assortment of color swatches and design books listed for free at Home Depot.
We are going to go with Benjamin Moore for the kitchen and the living room, which will be a lemon yellow and a spring green respectively. What made the decision was mostly access to paint samples on the day we decided we need to know NOW! This is probably a foolish way to decide, but noone ever said we were smart. Down the road from our house is a nice small independent paint store that sold samples of BM paint. The goal was to compare two colors per rom, kitchen, living room, bedroom.
We bought 6 samples for a whopping $25, yikes! Back home we were able to see how the colors looked on the walls, but I will say that I was extreemly dissapointed in the limited amount of samples that BM has, something like 200 out of their 6000 paint colors. The two brown/beiges we choose for the living room were terrible, the darker one looking like something you would find in a diaper! Out of the two kitchen yellows, one barely looked yellow at all! Instead it seemed like a cream, truly aggitating when I think of how much that stupid little bottle was! For our bedroom we had chosen a pale blue and a spring green, but decided to throw those colors on the living room wall after how terrible the browns looked.
The light blue was nice and I wouldnt have minded using that, though that would make both living rooms blue, which makes me think that we would refer to that side of the house as the blue wing. The green was initially startling, but very compelling. Its such a pretty green. It will require a bit of work to match furniture and decoration, but it will be well worth it I think. Our current blue furniture, what there is of it, will fit happily in the blue room :)
I did try putting that light blue down in our basement bedroom, but it looked blah and washed out. While we have a window down there, its technically under the deck so the amount of sunlight is limited. I was a bit frustrated because I didnt want to be stuck buying more pricy samples and I was begining to doubt the integrity of buying expensive quality paint for a room that is never going to look great. My salvation came in the form of the oops section at Lowes where I located a taupe/beige color in eggshell finish by Valspar for $5! That'll do pig, that'll do! I know I can liven up the room in other ways and saving myself $45 on the paint is motivating for sure.
Well that was quite a segway from the list of wallet ransackage. Besides primer we had to buy rollers, roller pads, trays, handle extensions, edging pads and drop cloth. havent used the drop cloth yet, instead Ive lined most of the house in newspaper. It has an odd puppy training feel to it and the ink gets all over! The edging pads were something I was curious about, having read many reviews from the UK advocating them. They are awesome! Very convenient to use, especially in high corner places. They apply a thin coat, which is the only drawback, but Im thinking of buying the next size up to use during actual painting. Has anyone used them? If not, did you use rollers? What brand of pads did you buy, cheapies or ? Or were you a brush fanatic?
Now I need to find a decent shade of white that I can use through the house on the windows and trim. It needs to coordinate with the vibrant colors we have without being too bright. Some of the other rooms we have will likely not be fully painted but the built in shelving really needs it.
So far I think we have spent $125 in supplies and prep alone, that may be an over exaggration since Im not looking at the receipts, to be honest Im a bit afraid to...