Not All Paints are Created Equal

The big gaping hole in our living room ceiling was covered over Easter Weekend, while we were in Texas. It is so nice to have contractors you trust, to be able to get out of the house/town for two nights and come home to a completed job.

Paul hauled the tub of primer up from the basement and put on the first coat while I worked in the kitchen trying to organize, clean and empty the dishwasher. He realized he was too low on ceiling paint and shot off to Home Depot to pick up some more. But shortly after he left, and I was making the most addictive granola in the entire world, I realized I didn't have any vanilla extract. I shot him a text asking him to swing by the store while he was out.

Instead of making two trips, he looked up Glidden and found out that they sold it at Wal-Mart as well. We like the ceiling paint that goes on pink and dries white. It saves us a lot of re-work while the paint is drying. We used it at our last house, we used it on every ceiling in this house. He grabbed what he needed from Wal-Mart and then came home and started applying the ceiling paint.

The can was slightly different than the first, but they were both Glidden, both white ceiling paint with the pink additive. Surely they were the same thing, right?!

We woke up the next morning and determined pretty quickly they were not the same paint. It's amazing that Glidden goes to the effort to make two different ceiling paints (white with the pink additive). I have to think that is extremely wasteful financially and wasteful of resources. But hey, they didn't ask me and it's not my company.

We should have known better. Not all paints are created equal. Even when you buy the exact same paint from the same store and the same row, there is a good chance that those paints came from different lots and their slightly off. We shouldn't have been so quick to just buy whatever white Glidden ceiling paint they had at Wal-Mart assuming that Glidden couldn't possibly make two types of the exact same thing and sell it to two different stores.

The new ceiling paint was noticeably more tan even though it claimed to be white. So back to Home Depot we went and bought the white we really liked. Slapped up another layer of paint and now it's as if our flood never even happened. Except for the ceiling fan hasn't arrived or been installed yet. We discussed just repainting the entire ceiling in the living room with the new paint. Chances are, no one would have noticied. But when they were next to eachother we both preferred the stark white over the "cream".

Paul took that can of "white" paint down to the basement and even though it is formulated for ceilings threw it up on the basement panelling as a sort of primer.

 

The tiki bar days have ended. While it still needs primer on about 1/3 of the walls and a final paint job, it's already a pretty amazing transformation. At least the paint served a good purpose somewhere.