Sunday, September 7, 2008

Painting!

I had a new roommate move in last weekend. In the room where she moved in, there were some Chinese characters on the wall that had been painted over. However, they had bled through the paint. This didn't look very good, so I decided to fix it before she moved in.

I talked with my co-workers and asked them how to get rid of it. They told me about Kilz and how to use that first and then paint over it. Well this was the first time I've really looked at the paint in my house. I realized the original paint was an off-white color. It is on all the ceilings and the walls of 3 of the bedrooms upstairs. All the walls downstairs and the walls in the bedroom my roommate moved into were all a darker brown color. There are a lot of paint cans in the garage. So I went out and did some investigating. I saw there was a large can of brownish colored paint. I ASSUMED it was the color of the browner shade of paint because why would there be original paint out there? Me being the brilliant one, took it to home depot (there was a home depot tag on the lid with the shade-smart thinking) and they mixed up a small can of matching paint.

The work began. It took 4 coats of the primer before the characters did not bleed through. I waited 24 hours and came back the next night to paint over the primer with my new can of paint. As I started, I realized after a few strokes that it was a little lighter than the paint on the walls. At that moment, it finally dawned on my that this was the color of the ORIGINAL paint. So......the characters are gone, but now my roommate got to move in to her room with a patch of light colored paint by the window. Unfortunately, there aren't any more BIG cans of paint in the garage. Just little cans that I really don't think match the walls. Anyone have suggestions on how to match the paint on the walls to a can of paint so I can retouch this patch, once again?


3 comments:

The Gag-nears said...

Totally have done that before. The problem is that you got a small can of paint - the break down into color from the big can to the small can doesn't come out right. So spend the money to get the gallon of paint and it will be the right color. Did that on my kitchen wall when I just needed a quart to finish up a few places, but ended up with light streaks - then had to go get a gallon anyway to exactly match. So getting a quart doesn't compute down to the correct color from the gallon. Hope that helps and makes sense. Call me if any questisons! I am the painting expert by now - let me tell you!

Nicole said...

I owe you help on this one! Unfortunately, I'd say I don't know and hopefully Bec's answer will work! Love you!

Jennifer said...

A little late replying on this one, so sorry. I worked in the paint dept at Sears for 2 years and never did I see such a drastic change between the same paint color being mixed in a gallon vs a quart, so I don't think that's it, granted, Sears paint machines are very different from Home Depot's. The only thing I can think of for an exact match would require some patchwork afterwards. If you can cut out/off a 2"x2" square of the drywall, you can take that in for a computer match. But then, maybe you should just paint the whole room!