Good Paint Bad Paint
June 16th, 2008 SiobhanWell we’ve arrived back in Washington State, found a truly wonderful house with a truly wonderful landlady.
She has been foolish, er, KIND enough to let us paint the place in whatever colors we choose so long as we put it back to white when we leave. This is a very nifty thing for me as the place has very high ceilings and architecture of this sort tends to look a bit institutional if left all white, IMO. Well that and with my previous 6 winters in Alaska , I’ve seen about as much white as I care to , thanks very much.
I decided I wanted a deep red kitchen. Now deep red is a problematic color even with the best of paints, but more than a royal pain in the butt with Home Depots supposedly premium paint, Behr.
After the first coat my kitchen looked like the inside of an autopsy. I sort of expected this considering the walls are textured. Disturbing visually, yes. Unexpected, no.
After the second coat the walls looked like the floor of an abattoir. Wasn’t expecting this one
3 coats in and it started looking as I wanted it to, barring the need for a few bits of touch up even after that 3rd coat.
I’ll never buy Behr Paint again. It ran, lifted, sagged and streaked and is hard to clean up. So much for premium paint.
On the good paint side of things, the new VOC free FreshAire paints are awesome even if they take some getting used to in the handling. It’s sort of like painting with Elmers glue. BUT, no smell and awesome coverage even with extreme color changes. Cleans up super easy too.
Valspar from Lowes is absolutely phenomenal in coverage and handling. It’s not VOC-less unfortunately.
Can’t beat the price though!
Our furniture finally comes tomorrow (keep in mind we’ve been in state since the 28th of May) and I can then stop painting walls and get back to painting for real.