Paint is paint right?
Or so I thought a couple of years ago. At the tender age of 29 I had finally managed to save enough to move into my own house. A minor problem (or so I thought at the time) was that a colour-blind mentalist had painted every room; it was all dark maroon and lilac with lime green gloss.

So off I troop to Homebase. Never having bought paint in my life I didn't realise how expensive it was, £15 for a 5ltr tin of magnolia? Fuck off! So I did what any other self respecting skinflint would do and started loading my trolley with Homebase own brand paint (£5 for 20ltrs, get in!).

Then something strange happened. Suddenly there was an old bloke stood next to me, he fixed me with a beady eye and said "Don't do it lad, 'tis like painting with milk".....Needless to say I ignored the old mans warning, hell, I had council tax to pay and beer to buy. What do old people know anyway?

As it turns out they know quite a lot about paint. The white emulsion was so thin it barely clung to the brush and took 4 coats to cover an already white ceiling. So the next time you are in Homebase, don't just ignore the wise old man and go and look at the chainsaws, heed his advice and buy the decent stuff, and then go and look at the chainsaws.

Does anybody want approx 30 litres of the cheapest shittiest ‘paint’ known to man? “Homebase value paint: It doesn’t do what it says on the tin”
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 10:16, 5 replies)

"tis like painting with milk"
Quality, *click*
(WittyUsernameHere, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 12:20, closed)

it could be that
the same colour-blind mentalist was living in my house before I moved in. It took me three coats of one-coat gloss to cover the green skirtings and I'm still trying to work out why he thought painting a bedroom salmony-orange was a good move.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 13:28, closed)

Milk would have done a better job at being paint!
And yes, the "one coat" paint required 2 coats to cover the dark maroon walls.

I wont even mention trying to strip the badly put up woodchip wallpaper with about 4 coats of paint over the top, arghhhhhhhhhhhhh
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 14:13, closed)

What is it with lime green gloss?
When we were looking for a flat, my boyfriend and I viewed a place that had been festooned with cream walls, dark brown plastic 'wood style' laminate and lime green gloss skirting, picture rails etc.

It made me nauseous. We did not move in.
(clumsyeloquence is a girl, Fri 4 Jan 2008, 21:29, closed)

It improves with age.
My stepdad, being an incompetent prick regarding anything more physical than taking a dump, thought it prudent to buy a 10-litre bucket of B&Q value brand white emulsion paint to cover the bare-brick walls in the garage/office conversion. Needless to say it didn't quite provide the desired coverage.

When I decided to tidy the place up after he died a few years later, I found the bucket of crappy paint and opened it through curiosity. I found that the white pigment had separated from the gloopy liquid (vegetable-oil-like) base. After scooping oput and disposing of the gloop, I stirred the remainder into a uniform paint-like substance and found that it covered at least as well as decent paint.

I've since found that most emulsion paint does the same thing (even 'good' dulux stuff) and always works better, the older it gets.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Tue 8 Jan 2008, 11:01, closed)