Monday, February 8, 2010

Ode To Valspar

I love this brand of paint. If you've ever spoken with me about interior paints, I've always recommended Valspar. It's just a great paint as far as I'm concerned. Okay, I've never really painted with anything else. I've used Behr for whites on baseboards and ceiling, but that's all. Valspar was recommended to us through a friend of a family member. They put a Valspar color on their walls and loved how well it went on. When the time came for us to choose a paint for our own walls, we went will a Valspar.

Now, I would have loved or first Valspar experience more, had Matt and I been using the correct roller nap for our walls. We definitely were not, and I was hating life because of it. Of course, I didn't find out that the nap was the reasons for all this loathing until about one week ago.

*Painting tip (that probably everyone knew but me): Use the correct roller nap for your walls. Not just anything will do. If you have a heavier texture on your walls, then you'll need a heavier nap. 

Anyway, back to Valspar. Our living room was painted an 'awesome' shade of lime green in certain areas. I was convinced that we would have to KILLZ it to get any sort of color to be true in those areas. Matt and I decided to chance it and not KILLZ the areas before we painted over it. TA DA! It was such a relief that even when I looked really closely at those walls, I couldn't see a hint of lime-ness. Only 'Jekyl Club Cherokee Tan'. I was so relieved.

Onto the next project: 'Buddy's Room'. This room had previously been painted a lovely shade of yellow. Okay, it wasn't lovely. It looked more like a yellow that you would be looking at in the bowl of a porcelain throne (although I don't really know why you'd be observing that), rather than on the walls of a baby's room. Add to that the really cool texturing they did to the walls. And by really cool I mean sand had been put into the paint color and then painted on the walls. Um, sand on walls equals one scratchy mess. It was really terrible.

So Matt and I got to work. We scrapped down the walls (much less of a project that I thought it would be, thank heaven) only to find a gunky shade of red under the slightly less desirable shade of yellow. Oh what a room! Sigh... whatever, the scrapping was done.

Now for paint colors! My sister and I chose, and thankfully Matt agreed to, Valspar's Limonata and Water Fountain. We're redoing the baseboards and trim and adding a chair rail, so these two colors will be separated by a high gloss white. Oh, and the linked Limonata is a brighter color than my computer monitor is showing. So if the colors make you want to throw up, just consider the monitor resolution your looking at.

Obviously this picture does not show the finished product, but it does show why I am Ode-ing Valspar. This paint job is only one coat of Valpar. ONE COAT PEOPLE! It's incredible! Proper roller nap + ferociously thick paint = easy as pie paint job. We'll go back over a couple of areas once the paint dries (this is a picture of wet paint, that's why there are some weird lines and the corners and sketchy), but really, there are almost no bald spots. Honestly, I'm speechless.

For anyone interested in this awesome brand, Valspar is sold at Lowe's and is slightly more expensive (between $25 and $30 per gallon) but you'll easily save money in the long run by having to buy less paint to get the color and finish you want.

Love, love, love - love, love, love! If we're lucky 'Buddy' will have a room by the end of this week. I'm practically giddy.

1 comment:

Snell Family said...

We love Valspar too! Although with white we had to do 3 coats but I'm sure any brand of bright white you would have to do that with. When I first looked at the "after" picture I thought it was going to be green and yellow then I remembered you still have the blue to paint. Good thing because that yellow really is a bad yellow. I'm sure it's going to look great when you're all done.