Finding My Way Home, Home Renovation, Living Green, REAL Tips

House Paint: It’s NOT All the Same

Meet Dale. Dale is my Paint Guy – he is the Manager of Austin’s Hill Country Paints.

When I need my paint fix, which is quite frequent, I go visit him and his co-worker John, at the store on Anderson Mill in Northwest Austin. I’ve recently realized just how interesting these visits are – not only do I get to “talk shop” with them, I also get to live vicariously through the interior and exterior house painting and home remodeling of their other customers.

A typical visit goes like this:

I bring in my project du jour, chat with Dale and John while selecting paint colors, and then wait patiently (ok, not so patiently, if you know me) while they mix it up. Invariably, other customers come in, paint color strips, fabric or design magazine in hand, and start their paint color selection process.

And then the fun begin! When the customers start talking, I get to hear all about their home, the room(s) they are painting and sooner or later, their friends’ projects, their neighborhood and so on. LOVE IT!!!! This paint store is a treasure trove of ideas for choosing house paint colors and sells some of the best house paint available in the local market.

I love it when people decide to go with the good stuff- paint that will last long past when the homeowner decides to re-paint to a different color or style. It is no fun at all to have to re-paint a room just because the paint job didn’t perform as expected, which can happen if you choose house paint that doesn’t conform to the actual use requirements of the room or spaces being painted.

Which brings me to the premise of this post: all house paints are NOT the same!! The most frequent thing I hear with regards to paint in this line of business is that paint is paint is paint, and that as long as you can get a paint sample or paint color chip matched into the brand you want (frequently chosen primarily by price), you’re good to go. NO!

Paint quality runs the gamut from really really poor performance characteristics to really really good. For some paint jobs, like painting the inside of an outdoor shed that will be filled with gardening tools, knock yourself out with the cheap stuff. Ditto for kids’ projects that will outlast their interest regardless of the quality of the paint. I am also a huge fan of $5-a-can spray paint for painting things that would otherwise be destined for Goodwill or the Salvation Army: sometimes even cheap paint can extend the life of something that is nearing the end of its useful life (style-wise) in my home.

If you’re painting a space in your home where you really want the paint job to hold up to a lot of abuse, however, you really do need to go with a high-quality interior paint that performs how you need it to. For most interior and exterior paint house paint jobs, the cost of the paint pales in comparison to the cost of house painting services. Even if you paint your home yourself, the time (your own labor) and expense (painting supplies, in addition to the paint) you will incur can be extensive, depending on the size of the job. If you call in a professional painting company to give you an interior or exterior house painting estimate, ask them to break out the charges so you can see how much of the total cost of the job is labor and how much is the cost of the paint. You may be surprised. A house remodel I’m working on this week includes repainting the exterior of the house. Of the several thousand dollars in that line item of the bid from the contractor selected for the job, only $190 was for the actual paint! We upgraded to a better quality paint, from Hill Country Paint (Benjamin Moore), for a difference of less than $100 of the total cost of the job. The paint we selected will hold up much much better than the cheap contractor-grade paint that was part of the original bid.

You may ask, what are the characteristics of good paint vs not-so-good paint?

When Consumer Reports tests paint, they report on the following characteristics:

• Hiding (how well does each coat hide the paint underneath? How many coats are required?)
• Surface Smoothness (can you see roller marks when the paint is dry?)
• Staining (can the paint resist a greasy stain, like those chicken-wing eating kid hands in your home?)
• Scrubbing (does the paint hold up to an abrasive cleaner, or does it come off on the sponge or cloth?)
• Gloss Change (does the paint’s sheen, or gloss-level change after it has been cleaned? Do you see the marks?)
• Sticking (does the paint dry completely, or does it retain a little bit of tackiness?)
• Mildew (does the paint inhibit mildew growth? Does it have additives specifically formulated to enhance this characteristic?)
• Fading (does the paint fade over time when exposed to UV light, including sunlight?)
• Claimed VOC’s (mg per liter of Volatile Organize Compounds, the stinky stuff that hurts your brain and the environment, among other things)

An on-line subscription to Consumer Reports is money well-spent: the cost of the subscription ($25-ish) is far far less than the cost of even cheap paint to re-paint a room before its time, and you can look up all sorts of other products you’re going to be purchasing this year! Whoo-hoo!

A fantastic selection of publications on paint quality and paint characteristics can be had from the Paint Quality Institute’s Continuing Education Plublications page.

Personally, I only use Benjamin Moore in my own home. I have used Kelly Moore, Sherwin Williams, Behr and a bunch of others over the last 20 years and have just decided where my performance-to-price balance lies. Most of the interior paint in my home is the Regal Matte (highly scrubbable). As I cycle through and re-paint (for design changes, not because the paint failed), I now used the newer Benjamin Moore Aura paint whenever I can. The public opinion on this is split: some people hate it, some people love it. Personally, I think the folks in the former category probably didn’t use the right tools and/or didn’t follow the instructions: the application techniques are not the same as for other paints. Some folks are also dismayed by the price ($55/gallon). Why do I love it? The finished paint is GORGEOUS! There are a lot of excellent paints and paint companies out there, so do your research and pick the brand that YOU love!

Paint quality comes up even when picking products for other parts of a home remodeling project. I was at Toluca Granite (off North Lamar) this afternoon digging through remnants for some tables I’m going to have custom-made and was talking to myself about what color and kind of paint to use for the bases. Metallic? Gunmetal Grey? Black? What is best for metal? Can I do metallic-on-metal-with-a-sparkly-granite-top? The owner of Toluca Granite gave her two cents worth, and the paint conversation was off and running! She recently painted her new (old) house in a combination of Aura in the spaces were she was certain of the colors and in several colors of a less expensive Kelly Moore paint in the rooms where she is likely to re-paint soon, possibly even this summer. This was a win-win for her: a low-risk way for her to audition some colors without incurring substantial cost in the not-certain rooms while using a super-durable paint in the high-traffic main areas of her home.

This post is getting ridiculously long to not have any more photos, so I’ll sneak you a peek at my daughter’s room, painted last year in two fabulous colors of purple, in the Benjamin Moore Aura, matte finish:

[View with PicLens]

This room is a classic example of letting the paint do the work. We cleared out the room, hit it with a single coat of each color, touched up the few missed spots and called it done. The paint is absolutely opaque and you can’t see roller marks, brush marks, or any of the touch-ups. Because the bedding is almost all white, and the zebra throws are inexpensive (but oh, so smooth and silky) from Stein Mart, the paint is really what makes the room. I don’t think a lesser-quality paint could carry off this color and not look tacky.

So, now that you know that all paint is not the same, here is a fantastic source for further reading:

The Paint Quality Institute educates consumers, contractors and retailers on the advantages of using the highest quality paints and coatings. PQI has testing facilities in 14 different sites worldwide where paint formulations are subjected to real-life conditions and their performance monitored over time. The PQI Spring House in Pennsylvinia has 30,000 panels and over 120,000 paints on exposure!

If it seems like I’m promoting this one particular store (meaning Hill Country Paint, an Austin business of three stores, actually) store, you may be wondering, what’s in it for her (or, for me)?

Fair question, and I’m glad to share.

These past few weeks, I’ve been working closely with a client to get his house on the market. The work on the home is extensive and fantastic and is turning out really really well. Over the weekend, however, we hit what could have been a huge stumbling block: all of the old cans of paint that had been in the garage had been disposed of earlier, and the saved sample cans of the interior paint we had set aside for reference had mistakenly been disposed of as well. No one had a sample of the original trim paint – so we didn’t know the brand, color or sheen of the trim paint and we needed to paint some new sections of trim to match the original. I had a pretty good inkling it was Benjamin Moore paint because the owners had been under my influence 4 years earlier when they chose the original trim paint.

Without being certain, however, it was starting to look like all of the trim would have to be re-painted, to make sure it matched. This is a decent-sized house and it has a lot of trim, including crown moulding. Re-painting would have been a huge, expensive job and would have thrown the entire project off-schedule (as if the rain wasn’t already killing us!). I pulled two sections of door casing off two different areas of the house and spent two hours working with John at Hill Country Paint to match the paint. First he tested it to determine it was latex and not oil, then he opened can after can after can of different formulations and sheen until he found the match. After that, he incrementally adjusted the tint until he had a near perfect match to the original.

I took the piece of door casing that was half-and-half (half new, half old) to the General Contractor for the job and asked if it looked good to him. He studied it and asked if it was the old, or the new . . . and I said, “you tell me”! I am not kidding when I say that we studied it in different light at different angles and couldn’t tell which side was which! YAY! As a REALTOR, I am obligated to protect the best interests of my clients. In this case, knowing a bit more than average about paint saved my customer hundreds of dollars and a significant amount of time.

A few more images from my last visit to the store:

[View with PicLens]

If you live in Austin or the surrounding communities, and you’re considering re-painting all, or part of your house, drop by Hill Country Paint and chat with Dale Darveau, the Manager of the stores. Dale can help you pick the right paint quality formulation for your job as well as go over your paint color selections. If you have a favorite paint store and your own local Paint Guy (or Paint Gal), I’d love to hear about them! After all, when you customize your house, and that includes paint, you’re making your house your HOME.