I've been doing a lot of painting lately. I guess that comes from moving into a house that had been lived in by two other families, so it has its share of scuffs and dings. For me, there is nothing like clean walls to make a house feel fresh, so I have been walking around with my touch up paint every day. I am usually pretty rigorous about wiping handprints off walls, teaching my kids not to touch the walls, and routinely using touch up paint. Everyone who toured my Cabot house when it was on the market thought we had just repainted all the walls and couldn't believe that we had three kids and had lived in it for 5 1/2 years. It's all about how to camouflage, people! LOL!
The good thing about living in a preowned home is that I am not as paranoid about messing up anything. You know how it is when you have a brand new house (or car); you don't want a single ding, dent, nail hole, or blemish to "ruin" your perfect canvas. Remember the days when you parked your new car in the back field of the Walmart parking lot, so no one would ding your doors? When I lived in two previous new construction houses, it felt a lot like that. I was scared to nail anything at the wrong height and end up with an extra hole. I didn't want to use paint in case it wasn't perfect.
However, in this house, I feel the freedom to try anything. If the wall is already dirty and scuffed, nothing I can do is going to make it worse! I have actually hammered quite freely and realized that a little spackle and more touch up paint will blend right in.
During this process, I have had some good and bad days with paint. First, let's discuss the bad: chameleon paint. How can paint look good in one house, and then the EXACT color look horrible in another house? It doesn't make any sense. I had Arden's green paint from her Cabot bedroom duplicated in two gallons for her new room here. The paint was the exact formula, brand, etc. as before, but now it looked like Aqua Fresh toothpaste on the walls (or neon mint chocolate chip ice cream) instead of "fresh, delicate green." Trust me, subtle shabby chic decor did not look good mixed with neon green! Stuart and I couldn't figure out what went wrong; I had to stop the painter after just one wall and tell him I was getting different paint. Then, I spent the next two days looking at every green paint swatch in Behr, Benjamin Moore, Ralph Lauren, and Sherwin Williams. We got brave and just started applying the paint in sections to Arden's new bedroom, so pretty soon she had a green rainbow painted around the room. After the Aqua Fresh color was already on, we didn't care what else we did to the walls! However, we weren't having any luck. Literally, every green color we bought would look great in one type of light but turn colors in different lighting. Some greens become yellow, some turned into blue tint, some were too gray. It was a nightmare. I even went "pink" for awhile, but that was a challenge since I didn't want a room that looked like bubble gum. Finally, Stuart found the perfect green -- which wasn't even called green (the name is "mellowed ivory"). It's another chameleon paint that turns into green once applied! Now, Arden's room is finally painted and looks just like I dreamed it would (see picture above). However, we are out $150 for green paint in eight various shades!
The good side of my painting experiences has been getting a good match on the existing color and doing touch up painting. Since I was left cans of original builder's paint from Sherwin Williams with the formula on the cans, I easily was able to get more matched from the same store location (which still had the builder's formula in the computer). This has allowed me to paint "corner to corner" on only the worst walls and not paint the entire room, and you can't tell. Plus, the paint has been so close, I can actually "dry brush" the paint on corners of walls, above baseboards, etc. to cover scuffs without painting the whole wall, and you can't see the paint lines. To do this successfully, test a small area first. Plus, it helps if the following items are done:
1. have extremely closely matching paint of a good quality
2. use a good quality paint brush to eliminate brush marks
3. use a dry brush with very, very little paint to "dry brush" over light scuff areas
4. it works best with FLAT paint with no sheen
I have now painted all the lower walls in three bathrooms, kitchen, and the foyer, plus I have painted all the baseboards with semi-gloss in those same areas. It's been rewarding to see the walls freshen up before my eyes! Maybe all the new paint will help camouflage the dust I haven't been cleaning . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment