Painting

So, much of the house interior was painted mint green, a color I just don't like. I had heard of low-VOC paints, and wanted to investigate a bit. The Green Seal site lists a lot of paints that meet their standards here.



I decided it was worth trying some paint from Yolo Colorhouse, and we found that a little chichi "eco-boutique" in Atlanta carried their paints.



We loved this paint. It covered well, only one coat, with no primer, covered mint green with a sort of medium gray-blue (Water 04). It didn't smell at all, dried fast, and washed off easily (it is water-based). We were able to paint the dining room and kitchen slowly and gradually, when we had time, with kids helping and underfoot, in the winter with the windows closed, without having to worry about ventilation. A gallon of interior eggshell finish paint costs about $45; you can buy it online, but unfortunately the color samples online are not very precise. You can order small samples with actual paint on them, if you are finicky about color.

For the lower half of the dining room we used Sherwin Williams Harmony paint, again an interior latex in an eggshell finish, in straight-out-of-the-can white. We didn't prime, and found that this took three coats to cover the mint green. That was a little tedious. The paint seemed thinner, somehow, than the Yolo, and was a little bit smelly when you actually got your nose close to the can. It was in the same price range as the Yolo, but is obviously more widely available and I think they can mix colors to order. We decided to go with Yolo for the next painting job, the upstairs, though (not yet begun, though the paint and supplies have new been sitting in the bedroom for a month).



Painting with small children? Turn all clothes inside out. A five year old can be helpful, though needful of close supervision. A two year old is a recipe for disaster; though he desperately wanted to help, his idea of helping was things like submerging a screwdriver in the can of paint.