my take on Behr paint

I've definitely found this to be true: you get what you pay for.

We chose Behr Premium Plus paint in the Eggshell Enamel finish for the upstairs.  Not to be confused with their Premium Plus Ultra line - that's the paint with the primer included.

We also bought Home Depot brand rollers - then the next time around we bought Wooster rollers from Lowe's.  Worlds o' difference, y'all.  Also we bought some no name brand edge brushes, and then a Purdy brush.  We have each sneakily called shotgun for it whenever we started to paint for the day.  We'll be buying  more of those to do the downstairs and trim when the time comes.

In retrospect, I don't regret buying the paint at all.  I do wish I'd been a little more concerned with the directions. Specifically, the priming instructions.  And I quote:

• Use a product such as BEHR ENAMEL UNDERCOATER PRIMER & SEALER NO. 75. On new drywall in low-moisture rooms, use a product such as BEHR NEW DRYWALL PRIMER & SEALER NO. 73.
• For optimal color development, better hide and to reduce the number of topcoats with deep colors denoted with a dagger (†) on the color chip, apply a custom tinted primer.

We didn't feel it would be necessary to use a primer since we were covering light colored walls.  That my dear readers, all four of you, is not a mindset that I recommend.

Please, may I draw your attention to the second bullet point?

You guessed it.  They meant that, apparently.

Our colors upstairs in the main living area are Green Tea, Village Square, with Coconut Husk on some accent walls. Coconut Husk is the color we had to do 2 1/2 coats on to get the depth I was looking for.

Yeah - and about those three different shades of greenish - I was sold on the Green Tea from the first day Mr Lemon brought home the paint chip books from Home Depot. The picture had crisp white trim, minimal furniture and decorations, and it just made me happy looking at the picture.  If I were a cab driver, I would have cut it out and stuck it in my visor JUST LIKE THE MOVIES as a reminder of what I was working for.

OF COURSE I knew we couldn't have just lightish green everywhere.  Somehow I found a picture online of someone's house of the Village Square, and I thought it was more brown than it is in real life.  Mr Lemon dutifully bought it, although he called and said, "Hey, um, this looks a little lighter than what we were going for - there's a shade darker on the paint chip called Coconut Husk - wanna try it?"

OF COURSE I thought I knew better what with the internet picture and all, and said, "No - this is what I want. BUY IT."

We painted one wall Green Tea, and an adjacent wall Village Square the day before Zesty's birthday party.  After exactly 36 hours, I knew I could not live with that combination on adjacent walls.  Mr Lemon went back to Home Depot and picked up his gut instinct in Aisle 3.

{haha! Yep - that sound you hear is my blogging mojo coming back. That was completely off the cuff and unedited for comic relief. whew. I was beginning to think I'd never be funny again.}

We recoated the VS with CH, and painted the transition wall between the kitchen and dining room CH. Then we ran out of GT at a great stopping point, the foyer. We sat back and lived with it for about a week, fully intending to buy another gallon of GT.  Then Mr Lemon suggested we just try the VS in the foyer.  Worse case scenario, we say meh, and repaint it.  It was a risk worth taking, and we are so pleased with the results!

        

Before

After

{Why does the left picture have more pixel padding around the edges? So weird.}


These pictures are not the best quality, because we have so much natural light that the camera flash washes everything out in the day time, but you can see that the walls we chose to paint Coconut Husk kind of "shadow" the Green Tea.  Village Square will be a nice transition down the stairs to our family room, the colors of which I have changed my mind eleventy billion times. I have convinced Mr Lemon that we should either prime those walls or suck it up and buy the Behr Premium Plus Ultra paint this time.

Zesty said, "Daddy on the wall? Be keerful! Don't fawwwl! You get broke!"

That vertical line up there above the pantry?  We have a solution for that.  My dear friend Rachel mentioned corbels months ago on her kitchen island redo post, and I just filed that link away for future use.  When we realized the GT needed to still be over the peak of the hallway for continuity, but that the foyer would be VS, I said "HEY - let's put a piece of decorative something up there to separate the colors but still leave it open."  And then I found my grown up words and we agreed on this lovely piece.  I'm still trying to convince him that I would deem that offering as an acceptable combination Mother's-Day-slash-31st-birthday-in-33-days present.

Our bedroom is next on the list to be painted, and you guessed it - we're going with Village Square there too. It's also what I painted my bathroom.  The bathroom does look darker, because it's a smaller room, but the color choice will be perfect for my barely-used-hand-me-down grown up comforter set.  

So there you have it. I have limited experience with paint, but I am very happy with the colors we've chosen.  Semi-happy with having to do two coats on the walls, because I think I'm a two coat paint person anyhow.  Extremely proud of all of our hard work.  It's not done yet - and we have hardly any furniture still - but all in good time.