Talk about sticker shock. I'm doing a little home improvement and went to Lowe's to buy the paint today. I bought one gallon of Kilz, two gallons of white ceiling paint, three gallons of mixed paint for the walls, and five gallons of white semi-gloss for the trim and some walls. $337, and that's not all I'll need. I went ahead and bought 5 gallons of white because I'll probably do all the trim and doors in white. I'm hoping the 3 gallons of wall paint will do the living room, den, and mud room. I bought what the lady that I hired to paint told me to, (I refuse to paint). I hope she was right on the amounts. This is going to get expensive by the time I get the whole house done.

Yeah, paint prices fucking blow. Last time I bought the expensive stuff thinking I could get by with one coat. Nope.

Tell me about it, two gallons when I repainted a bedroom last year.
And it was supposed to be able to cover in one coat.

hundred dollars at the home improvement store buys nothing these days.

I thought $500 would buy the paint for the whole house. I'll be lucky to get the downstairs painted for that. We still have the kitchen, laundry room, and bathroom to do downstairs. There are three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a hallway upstairs.

yea I get the good stuff too at sherwin williams or benjamin moore and its like $40 a gallon

I was waiting for this:

If you really want some shock price automotive paint. We had to do some work on a red candy F150 last week and I saw the slip for the paint. A can maybe twice the size of a can of cat food was just under $150. Now think about painting a whole car.

You ought to check out the prices I pay for artist paints. I have some cadmium's that cost over $30.00 for a 1.25 OUNCE !.

My heart bleeds purple piss for you.

I'm in the middle of painting my entire, 3,300 square foot house.

The whole mother fucking house.

I found the opposite the last time I bought some.  I bought Behr Premium Plus Ultra Exterior, in some brownish-tannish color (don't recall the name), and after the first coat, the color was 99% there.  I probably could have gone just a hair thicker and had it 100%, but I wanted two coats for weather protection.  In the past, when I've bought cheap paint, I've put down two coats and it was still obvious that it wasn't well-covered.

In any event, if you want coverage, tint your primer as well.  In this case, the primer wouldn't accept enough pigment (the paint used a special base), so the paint had to do all of the color coverage itself.  But for more realistic colors, throw down one or two coats of cheap primer, tinted appropriately, THEN put down your expensive stuff.

And if you're rolling, the 18" roller frames and the big pans that hold a few gallons of paint let you BREEZE through things.

Every now and then I don't kick myself for buying a log home.  This is one of those rare times.

I don't believe in the primer and paint all in one. What i do is use bullseye 123 tinted to the color of my final coat.
one coat of tinted bullseye and one final finish coat. Works great on hardi plank boards.

I figured buy once cry once and bought burgundy-ish Behr Premium something or other interior paint from Home Depot that was supposed to be one coat, and it sucked out loud.  I had to buy double the estimated quantity and was on coat four over Kilz primer before I thought it looked half decent, cost me quite a few bucks.

I painted our house new house. $5,700 for paint and primer. $5,700.  I about choked when I got the bill from Sherwin Williams. I nailed the estimate though, not one full gallon of tinted color left over.

That was the most miserable 3 days of my life.

Finishing doors and trim sucked too. I did everyting a dark custom stain and shot catalyzed  ML Campbell finishes. 23 doors, 37 windows and thousands of feet of base and casing and extension jambs and both sets of stairs and handrails. If you think paint is expensive, try to stomach 5 gallon buckets of Krystal at $85 a gallon. . All I did for 5 months was finish wood and windows every night after work.

I am so happy that schit is done.

I save money by making my own paint.

11 paint recipes

I want whatever made old paint awesome; presumably lead, DDT, and dolphin meat.

It comes closer to one coat if you spray it. Most people over roll it so it doesn't cover.

Holy cow, I'm curious what all you bought and how much of it. I paint for a living and that's a shitload of money.

Fuck man.  I need to start making artisnal paints or some shit as a hobby.

For a while......



 

 

I painted an airplane last year that cost almost a grand per gallon of paint. I bought two gallons. That was just the base component, hardener and thinner were extra.

You need a smooth base of bald eagle heads.

You have an aircraft that needed painted, and you're crying about the cost of paint?!?  Yeah, I feel for you.

Yep, even though I work for Home Depot, I can attest to the quality of Behr paint.  Its good paint and does cover in one coat. Especially if you use a tinted primer.



 

Not my airplane. It belonged to a guy from Colorado, I think.

Quoted for truth.  I bought two quarts of epoxy primer a couple weeks ago for a car that we're building for my son and the primer, plus the related activator & reducer was damn near $500.  Two quarts of primer, $500...  

Most honest paint contractors will agree: It's a marketing thing. Many of the paints that earned the "paint and primer" label are no different in terms of chemical make up, before and after the label change. I kid you not, many paints had it simply added to the label.

The next "big foot" will be one-coat coverage. Behr's Marquee is not a crap product, it's actually alright - and it does seem to mostly cover with one coat, one thick coat with a high dryfilm thickness, and only within the very muddy pre-selected color palate that allows their colorants to do such.
It has value for consumers, but it's not a miracle in a can, and for a "low VOC" paint, it smells horrendous...

I believe it was one of the big-box mainstays that kicked off the race, everyone has followed suit, due to a buying climate where consumers will swear up and down it's a real thing.
To some extent, there is truth to the idea - but there are caveats. Try "paint and primer" on fresh unprimed sheetrock, and prepare for heartbreak
For most DIYers, they're painting over a prior paint job that's in mostly good condition. Depending on the color change, you may not need a primer to begin with.
It's a calculated marketing gimmick, combined with paint technology that's improved somewhat

This is not totally crazy - much of what made paint good, was some of the higher "VOC" items. Thanks to the EPA and our government's VOC regs, the industry has had to innovate, and fast, to come up with paints that perform well.

Benjamin moore's best stuff is well north of that
Aura runs $70ish, depending on where you are.

Dealer costs on paint have risen bigtime in the past few years.
The housing bubble's burst and our adventure into Obamanomics, VOC regulations changing the products, etc - has been unkind to that industry.

Insanity it is I tell you. My interior walls are 15 feet high

This.

Inflation is no joke, and this socialist "paradise" needs someone to pay for it

I'll bet the industry actually wanted the lead removed from paint.  

Since we have to repaint more often, the paint companies sell more paint.  



 

You should try and color match a factory color on a motorcycle. Colorrite, the supplier for most OEM factory paints, is currently $800/gallon.

When I painted our new house a few years back I opened a commercial account at Sherwin Williams.  McNizzle's House Painting Inc.  Saved a few bucks and got a free light stand. I was buying all the primer and paint for walls and ceilings.  Wasn't too bad as I have a log house with only interior partion walls needing paint.  

I did get paid in beer and pizza to help a friend paint his house so technically I guess I was in business.

Oddly enough, this is a case where there might be an exception, it's a dinosaur industry that doesn't like change. As VOC laws have changed products, many paint contractors will actually shop different paint retailers to see who has "the old stuff" in stock in their warehouse. Customers are not happy to return with their rusted-old gallon, and find out that a manufacturer is discontinuing the product.
It's almost like a baseball-player-level-superstition, not sure how to explain it.

The move towards the "greener" products has not been liked by all.  But, there are virtues.
A lot of that lead stuff "back in the day" took days to dry. (At least in the 1920s it did). If you did an exterior paint job, and it rained on day 2? (Of perhaps a 4 day dry cycle), oh boy.
In those days, you mixed it onsite with all the additives, some geniuses did so with ungloved hands. I'm sure if they used a glove, it was probably pure asbestos, dried in pure methelethlhorrible- or some other nearly unpronounceable chemical that has trial lawyers seeing dollar signs.
For the most part, paint today does not smell the way it once did, and it tends to dry quicker.  It's not hard to apply or work with, and it's getting better at that whole durability thing.
Oil/alkyd paints today, like say, Fine Paint's of Europe's Hollandlac Brilliant? It's a gloss so bright you can see your own face in it. That, is performance.

IMHO Good results sell more products - having to repaint sooner tends to leave a sour taste in the mouth of most consumers. If they're "price-centric" and that's it, then performance doesn't matter. The best value to them is in the price the moment they pay for it across a counter, not how it actually looks or performs in a home. But if you're putting a favorite color in a room hit by sunlight - you would be crushed when it starts to fade, and pissed about the results.

Paying more for paint today, (for the most part) - gets you a paint with better UV-light resistance (sunlight beats the tar out of paint), generally better durability (having no finish difference after scrubbing a wall, a BFD), easy of application, etc. If you're having a paint contractor do your house, you're pretty much better off going with a more expensive paint. The biggest expense is going to be the labor involved - if you choose a better product, it will last longer and he won't be back as soon.

Automotive paint has high performance expectations man. Think about it - it has to get bombarded by UV light, resist dirt/dust, resist damage after being cleaned by knuckleheads, take physical damage with the consumer expectation that this damage will "buff out", and do this for years. I would be suspicious if said paint was cheap!

Obamas Fault!

# BRING BACK LEAD PAINT!

Walmart. Pretty sure it's way cheaper than lowes or home depot. Kilz is expensive but it covers good.

 

There was once a time when this was the premium stuff man.

Sanding it does release lead dust - and one of the other hiccups, Re: Kids eating paint? Apparently, the white lead tastes sweet

It's not like a dumb kid putting dirt in their mouth, it could be mistaken for candy.

Would you happen to have some pictures that you could post?

Sherwin Williams - it's not cheap, but it will give you excellent coverage.

I cant remember the exact quatities, i heve the receipts at the pffice, but off the top of my head I recal about 65 gallons of ProMar primer and 50 gallons of ProMar ceiling paint and 50 some gallons of Duration for the walls.  That also included a couple cases or rollers and a couple frames with extension poles and trays as I decided to upgrade to the 18" rollers. I could not imagine having rolled the house with anything smaller. There were times I wished they we even bigger...

I do remember taking a couple gallons back that I didn't have tinted which was nice to not get stuck with extra paint.

Duration is a good product but the interior stuff is way overpriced. For the exterior stuff it's worth it.

The promar 200 low sheen is a great interior paint and is inexpensive. Sherwin Williams offers major volume discounts and plays lots of games with their pricing. I'm a builder, but buy little paint directly. My price on a gallon of promar 200 low sheen wall paint is like $30 a gallon or so. My friend that owns a large paint company pays about $15 a gallon for the same paint. If you are a homeowner waking in off the street they will point you to the duration or emerald lines which are expensive, or if you request it sell you the promar 200 for $35 or $40 a gallon.

Their pricing tiers do suck. I'm a builder as well, but we paint very little. Believe it not, I hit the 40% off sale they advertise and was able to buy the Duration cheaper than I could get ProMar on our account.

Spot on.