Day IV~ ....And The Paint Goes On.....

This is it!!! Can you believe it?  10 years and I STILL don't know what color I'm painting this place, but now I absolutely positively HAVE to decide this morning (pleasure/pain thing again!).  Luckily Diane's Mom's brother (I think) works for Benjamin Moore and gave her this color swatch sample strip thing with about 1000 different color samples in it.  Last night I picked #459 Woodland Green, but this morning  I changed my mind and went with the #466 Garden Path. (see? Procrastination comes to the rescue again!)

I wanted to use the Benny Moore brand because I've had such good luck with it.

PRO TIP!!:Painting sucks to begin with, so why double your work .... don't use cheap paint!  This includes Home Depot's Behr brand (although I think they've changed their formula recently).  The cheaper brands have less pigment so you have to put two coats on and that's double work, and as we PROs know, it's hard enough to get the first coat done!

So I looked up my local paint store (Fleck's Paint Spot) and, sure enough, they sell B. Moore so, armed with my amazing color wheel, headed there.

There was only one guy behind the counter and I was the only customer, so we had plenty of time to talk.  I told him exactly what I was doing, what kind of surface I was painting, etc, and this is what I learned.  Yes, B. Moore is good, but there is a cheaper better brand. (Notice I said "cheaper" but not "cheap").  It's called "C2".  It seems a bunch of chemists and scientists from several of the major paint companies broke away and started their OWN paint company  http://www.c2paint.com/our-products/index.php .

The paint is around $12/gallon cheaper ($31 vs $42) and this C2 company is really smart (S-M-R-T).  They have developed a color system that precisely duplicates other company's colors!  So when I wanted B Moore #466, the paint guy just punched that into the C2 paint machine and voila! The precise color came out!  I know this because I put a dab of it onto the Moore swatch and it is exactly the same.

Also, it turns out that paint store guy "Mike"'s family owns the paint store and he was nice enough to set me up with an account.  Now anything I buy is put on record and if I need more paint, I just call up and say "mix me up another gallon of what I bought the last time", and they know what it is.  Very cool.

He also said that based on what I was doing, to use the finish paint as the primer.  So instead of using primer and then topcoat, to just use the topcoat.

So, armed with the paint, the brushes, and a well scrubbed house front, the time has now come!  So I opened the can of paint, dumped it into my little yellow paint holder, and began on the left side, cutting in around the left corner post and around the window.  After that came the heavy artillery.... a pad-like device that I'd use to paint the shingles.  I was going to use as 4" brush, but I saw this thing at the Depot the other day and thought I'd give it a try.  The pad consists of a sponge, with a nylon short bristle substance that would get into and in between the little vertical ridges on the shingles.  Using a roller pan as my paint holder I dipped the pad in and began painting ..... works absolutely fabulous!

I don't know whether it's better to start at the top or the bottom, but I started at the top and worked my way down, maybe doing a section 3' wide at a time. I changed this technique several times as I went along and verified that it doesn't really matter.

PRO tip:  For God's sake get a radio or iPod!  Painting is probably one of the most boring things you will ever do in life, as it takes about .0000001 percent of your total brain power to do acceptable painting and your brain will most probably totally shut down completely unless you have some other kind of distraction.

Well, about 4 hours later the first coat was applied!  I thought that due to absorption of the paint by the shingles and the splotchy colors I was painting over, that the first coat would be uneven and blotchy.  To my surprise the color was consistent and looked great! I could actually just leave it as is, as it looks that good, but I'll do another coat tomorrow to get the color closer to what the paint swatch looks like. 

By the way, here's an interesting picture .... kind of a "before and after" both on the same picture.

PRO TIP:  I think people should paint their houses every thirty years whether it needs it or not.