Painting: Paint Brands

[Isaiah's Momma]

DH told me I can have $100 of our tax refund to do some painting in our house, right now ever thing is really borring hard to clean flat white. What Im thinking is I want to paint the family/living room, the dinning and kitchen area and the bath rooms. For the majority of it (all but the bath rooms) Id like to get a 5 gallon bucket of an off white color. Then at a later time I can go back and add some color to each room if I want. Im wondering what brand is best for the $$$, I know some brands a 5 gallon bucket is like $90 and Id like not to spend that much. What about Walmarts brands? Are they OK or should avoid Walmart?

[Isaiah's Momma]

BTW if I have left overs from the 5 gallons I can always start on one of the bed rooms.

[Isaiah's Momma]

Oh and Ill be painting the hall too but our hall is really small, like 4x5 feet

[SarahK]

I don't know what to tell you except you're probably being over-ambitious to think you can get that much paint out of $100. :dunno: We use Behr paint (the $90 for a 5 gallon bucket kind of paint) and get pretty good coverage out of it--but we still have to do at least two coats (sometimes more, depending on the color) in order to have a quality finish on the walls...and that's with a high quality paint.

[LisaM]

From someone who has painted alot and tried cheaper brands, you don't want to go cheap on paint. Go to Home Depot or Lowes. If you use a really cheap brand, it will come off when you clean the wall to get scuffs and marks off. Also when using cheap paint, you won't get as good of a coverage as you do when using a higher grade paint. In bathrooms, you need to use a paint that is especially for high moisture areas, especially if you have a small bathroom or poor ventialiation in your bathroom. Since you seem to want to get this paint to have a color rather than white, but then you want to add color later, this will be more of a basecoat and then again you want to have a good paint or your color will not roll correctly. You may want to put some more thought into the issue if you want to add color eventually and what colors. If you want any sort of darker shade, like reds, then you will need to add a primer to the walls in order to get the correct shade so paiting them right now may be a waste of time and money since you will have to primer over them. Just a thought. I would take the 100 and invest in paint one or two rooms and pick a color. We just painted our dining room and for 2 gallons a Ralph Lauren paint and a gallon or primer, it was 65 dollars. We have 1/2 a gallon left of the red paint. We then spent 50 dollars on 2 gallons of Ralph Lauren paint for our living room, no primer needed since it was a tan color.

Just my thoughts

[Isaiah's Momma]

I don't plan to ever do any dark colors. My dining/kitchen area is all one room and realy only 2 walls as the wall around the other side has a paintable wall paper like texture that I plan to paint later. So 4 walls in the living room (one wall is really small because of the fire place) 2 in the kichen/dining area and the tiny hall way. If I run outt of paint I can always buy more later too. I know home depot carries more than one brand of paint so I guess Ill start looking and getting Idea's. Our house is only about 2 years old and still has the original flat white paint that came with the house it doesn't look like it would be hard to cover since it will just be a diferent shade of white.

[Isaiah's Momma]

BTW what I mean by add color is like for example I might just paint one side of the living room a pale pink, green or blue shade to complement the white. Im just undecided on the color. As for the kichen area Im going to paint the other walls with the wall paper type stuff a medium blue but that a whole difrent area that I don't plan to paint now.

[jstauffer]

I've never tried using the cheapest paint. I'd be afraid to. Don't forget you'll need rollers, brushes, tape, drop cloths, etc. too. All those little things add up.

[Isaiah's Momma]

Also the larger wall in the kicthen dining area has 5 large windows that take up most the wall space. I need to take some pictures. Im definatly not going to use the cheepest paint I can find just some thing thats a lower price range. Im even wondering about the local hard ware stores brands like what the Ace Hardware has. Like I said Ive got time to shop around I was just looking for recomendations.

[Tina]

We just bought a new house & our painting every square inch of it (all 3,000 sq ft) and I highly recommend Glidden Professional paint. It covers the best! We painted our last house & started using a different brand from Lowe's to paint but it just doesn't cover nearly as well. I would pick 1-2 rooms to do with that $100 because you will need some painting tools such as rollers, brushes, tape, etc. as well.

Tina

[Isaiah's Momma]

We just bought a new house & our painting every square inch of it (all 3,000 sq ft) and I highly recommend Glidden Professional paint. It covers the best! We painted our last house & started using a different brand from Lowe's to paint but it just doesn't cover nearly as well. I would pick 1-2 rooms to do with that $100 because you will need some painting tools such as rollers, brushes, tape, etc. as well.

Tina

It is just the 2 rooms and the very small hall way that I want to paint. I was thinking of Glidden too, I have a card with some of there paint chips around here some where. We have brushes, drop sheets and tape. I just need to get rollers and paint pans.

Here are some pictures.
This is the windows on the wall in the kitchen

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4dd27b3127cceb98dae28c3b50000001610
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4dd27b3127cceb98da93602000000001610

This is the other wall in the kitchen/dinning area and you can see how small the hall is.
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4dd27b3127cceb98da90783010000001610

This is the wall on the other side of the hall and the entry way
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4dd27b3127cceb98dab0683010000001610

This is the wall from the door to the fire place
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4dd27b3127cceb98d96ecc36d0000001610

and the wall w/the fire place
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4dd27b3127cceb98d967d42cc0000001610

and last the wall on the other side of the room
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4dd27b3127cceb98d965542e40000001610

[Kate]

We have always used Behr. I find it has great coverage and it cleans very well.

[olcott]

We just painted our living room and the hallway going up our stairs, it took two coats, and the walls were already primed (the previous owner painted the walls with primer, rather than paint :duh: )

We used Valspar Integrity, and it cost us around 23$ a gallon..it took almost 2 gallons to paint just the living room and do one coat on the hallway going up the stairs..we did a light tan color called "aloof"

[olcott]

Oh..and another suggestion..I've never liked rollers much for painting, we've always used those paint pads, for me, I think they cover a lot more evenly, and there are a lot less drips and its easier to control

And don't forget you'll want to get some spackling and a putty spreader to fill in any holes in the walls from nails, etc.

[Isaiah's Momma]

Oh..and another suggestion..I've never liked rollers much for painting, we've always used those paint pads, for me, I think they cover a lot more evenly, and there are a lot less drips and its easier to control

And don't forget you'll want to get some spackling and a putty spreader to fill in any holes in the walls from nails, etc.

Our house is very new, there aren't any holes in the walls, the only nails in the walls are tiny and will be staying were they are any how.

[Beav]

Behr (the Home Depot brand) was rated #1 by Consumer Reports which is all I need to hear. My best friend is an interior decorator and has experience with them all - Behr is your best bet. The 5 gal. paint is about $90.

[Nichole]

We've had very good success with Behr, too. I used Glidden in Jackson's nursery, and I wasn't very happy with it.

[Tricia]

DH and I painted 3 rooms last year after we moved in our house and we were going trying to fix up the house for $1500 ( yeah I was crazy) but I know we bought Dutchboy paint at Walmart and it covered really well. I think that it was $15 a gallon at Walmart. They mixed the colors for me perfectly and our rooms turned out beautifully. We did paint 2 coats in each room and we had maybe 3 total gallons left out of 10. We bought a lot but we did a silvery grey for our spare bedroom, half white and half red for our office, and sage green for our kitchen. I know that the one in our kitchen is super easy to clean and still looks great a year later ( which is great since DH refuses to paint again until we have to paint a nursery).
We have a base color in our living room and hallway called "flax linen" that is tan which looks really good in my opinion.

Just my 2 cents.