Sears' Paint Sucks

     As I prepare to put yet another coat of paint on my house, I am reminded of something that happened in 1995. Our quaint domicile is among many on a main thoroughfare in town, and we have a lot of traffic going east to west, and vice-versa on our avenue. I noticed at the time every house in a three-block radius of our house the dominant color was white. I decided to be the exception to the prevailing trend and visualized our dwelling a sort of gray with burgundy trim and white windows.

      After a week's work and two coats of Sears best paint, this is the way it turned out. This photo was taken during a slight snow, but that is beside the point. Snow is covering the roof but you get the idea. I was happy as a lark until about six months went by, and then my story turns dark.

    
  Never mind the motorcycle... Look at the paint on my house after just six months wear. It began to peel off and bubble up. I thought maybe it was from the sun since the south side of our house gets the majority of sunlight throughout the day....BUT it was like this on all four sides of the house. I raised such a stink with the local store manager that he sent his district supervisor out to inspect my house. The store manager was convinced that I had 'applied it wrong.' I was quick to point out that this was not my first rodeo and I had painted houses many times in the past. The district supervisor  arrived and he too was stumped over the problem. He refused to have my house painted for me, but did give me a written letter for eight gallons of paint...'Good at any Sears store.' I presented the letter to the local store manager and he unhappily handed over eight gallons of Sherwin-Williams paint. I had soured on the color gray after all this trouble and decided to go to 'San Antonio beige.' The color sample looked good in the book.

         And No I don't just take photos of the house when it snows!! The 'San Antonio beige' turned out to be more of an orange when compared to the burgundy trim. I had friends saying, "Oh yeah, you live in that orange house, don't you?" I accepted my fours years of verbal abuse before deciding to paint another color. To make sure I did not have any trouble, I decided to sand and scrap as much as I could before applying my new color.

      Momma and I scraped and sanded for almost two weeks before we even opened the cans of new stuff. This time we went to Lowe's Home Improvement and came home with Valspar paint. This is good stuff and goes on like a heavy cream. The main color is called 'Buttermilk' and I got a close-call on the burgundy to trim out the house.

       It was a slow process, but youngest daughter, Jet, was quick to offer supervision. While we were in a remodeling mood, we also added to the garage.

      In this series of photos you can see how it looked when it was San Antonio beige...then when we converted over to Buttermilk and Cranberry...and the bottom photo shows how the garage was extended to present a more 'flushed' appearance with the front of the dwelling. The contractors also finished the roof evenly so it did not have that 'added on' look.

      I think it gives the house a cleaner look and it definitely is better looking than the previous two colors. These photos were taken about a year ago and the paint job is now about three years old. I am about to freshen up both colors with absolutely no thoughts of changing. The 'casa' was built in the late 1940's but Momma and I still love it... It's what a home is suppose to be.