Sunday, March 21, 2010

Paint, Paint & more Paint


As most people, we wanted to save money when it came to painting the new house. We were thrilled since the house is so large, that we would get to paint many different, harmonious colors. We studied & planned our color pallet. We felt happy with our final, husband approved choices. So we ventured to our local Wal-mart & purchased the affordable Color Place paint.

The colors were perfect to the swatches. We dreamed of how it would make the rooms feel & how beautiful it would look on the walls. To our surprise, it was thin, runny & did not perform as we had hoped. We are left with thin paint on the walls, multiple layers that do not cover the previous color & paint that began to wipe off when we tried to clean it with water two weeks after painting. UGH! What would happen if one of the children colored with crayons on the wall?! We'd have to wash it off & actually RE-paint.......not good at all!!

So in our frustration, I called & spoke to the assistant manager of the Hewitt Wal-Mart. I asked her if we could return the used & unused paint, to exchange it for the Kilz brand. Kilz is suppose to have a one coat guarantee. She listened to me & nicely told us to bring it in with our receipts.
So we did.
We took our empty cans, along with the full & partial used cans back to the service desk. We then proceeded to the paint counter & had the paint remade in the Kilz brand. We purchased fewer cans since it is suppose to cover better & is almost twice the price.

My advice:
Purchase name brand paint from Home Depot or Lowe's when you want to paint your home. We purchased one can, that was an oops paint from Home Depot.
We paid $5 for a can that was usually $25 & it worked wonders. It was a beautiful color & covered with only minor touch ups.
Do NOT purchase Color Place paint from Wal-Mart!
Don't let price determine your paint selection. We now have to put in twice the work to have good paint. We wish we had started with the name brand from the beginning. We've wasted time & money. Hard lesson learned :)