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| The yellow has to go |
We plan to do a major renovation on this house, so we need to be careful not to "waste" money prettying the place up before we have our plans done. It's really hard for both of us to do this. We just can't help ourselves! However, we both agreed - the yellow has to go. Bang for buck, paint is great value, but it’s still not cheap. How to save money? This is an old trick of mine that I have used twice before. Because we are serial renovators, we had a couple of buckets of paint hanging about. So, time for inventory: half a 10L tin of Dulux Weathershield in "White Duck"; half a 15L drum of Dulux Antique White USA (my all-time favourite white paint); about 2L of plain white; and my secret weapon, a tiny amount of black paint tint. I combine all the whites into the 15 L drum and stir madly. It’s probably worth investing in a paint mixer. It looks like a giant veggie masher, but works a treat for mixing thoroughly. The next phase requires time and patience. When all the whites are combined, I paint a test card or a bit of wall and I number them - just so I know which one is the original. On this one, I worked in the garage and painted my test patches directly on to the wall. Then wait for it to dry to see the real colour. Add a very small amount of the tint, stir and test again. I only had to add two lots of black before I came up with a colour I liked. We did need more paint to get the whole house done, so I took a sample of my colour to Bunnings (painted on a bit of card) and picked the closest colour. I came up with Taubmans' Pebble Bay, a trendy grey beige. The difference was amazing. Not only was the colour great, it looked clean and smelled way better than it did before. Happy days! We move in next week!
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| Worth the effort - much cleaner and fresher! |
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| Pebble Bay |
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| Paint stirrer |
