Fixing Houses: Mixing Your Own Paint for Savings and Harmony > NetSparsh

Home
>
Real Estate
>
Fixing Houses: Mixing Your Own Paint for Savings and Harmony

Fixing Houses: Mixing Your Own Paint for Savings and Harmony

To make the maximum profit on your investment properties, you'll need to save money wherever you can. One way to save significant amounts of money is to mix your own paint.

I recommend that you use only water-based paints. Technology improvements in latex and acrylic paints have made painting easier than it was with the old fashioned oil-based paints, and the new acrylics provide a great-looking finish. Purchasing "oops paint," marked down at home improvement and paint stores, can save hundreds of dollars on your painting projects.

By mixing your own paints, you can also guarantee a harmonious result for the entire house, blending the colors from the exterior to the interior and from room to room. For instance, during one of our projects, we purchased ten assorted gallons of paint from the Restore thrift shop. The paint hade been donated by Lowe's after having been returned by the original buyers, and included a lot of blues, greens, and grays. We used a fifteen-gallon plastic kitchen trash can to mix all the paint together, and then poured it back into the original cans. The color ended up a complex sage-green, which perfectly complemented the existing teal-green tile floor.

We used the original trash-can paint outside first, and then added white interior paint as we continued our color scheme inside, first painting the living room and a bathroom. Then I added a little green to the remainder and painted a bedroom. For each room, we added a little more white semi-gloss paint. As we went along, we saved a glass jar full of each paint blend for touch ups.

Paint experts suggest mixing only the same type of paints: exterior latex with exterior latex; interior acrylic with interior acrylic; interior latex with interior latex, and so on. But we routinely mix exterior and interior paints, and have never experienced any difficulty. The amount of sheen makes little difference in mixing paints, either, unless you're looking for a particular finish.

For one project, I started with five gallons of thrift store baby-blue paint, and then added a quart of black, in order to "gray down" the baby-blue. As we progressed through the bedrooms, I added a little more white semi-gloss latex paint to the mix. When I was done, the entire upstairs of the home blended harmoniously, yet each space had its own color and personality.

For another doghouse transformation, I added amber pigment, which you can pick up at most paint suppliers (but use it sparingly, because a little goes a long way), to five gallons of boring beige paint. We started in the main bedroom with the darker color and added white as we went along. The lightest shade ended up in a living room with a 23-foot-high ceiling.

Remember: oops paint is no different from regular paint. It was just a mistake, for whatever reason, and in case you're wondering how long oops paint can last, we recently drove by our very first doghouse-to-dollhouse home in Apple Valley, California, and the paint still looks great, even though that home was originally painted in 1979.

Professor Jeanette Fisher, author of Doghouse to Dollhouse for Dollars, Joy to the Home, and other books teaches Real Estate Investing and Design Psychology. For more articles, tips, reports, newsletters, and sales flyer template, see http://www.doghousetodollhouse fordollars.com/pages/5/index.htm

In The News:

CNBC
Trump lawyer: Moscow Trump Tower 'solely a real estate deal'
CNBC
An abandoned proposal to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 presidential election was "solely a real estate deal and nothing more," President Trump's lawyer told congressional staff on Tuesday. The discussions about the potential ...

and more »

CNBC
Real estate investment trust sees business booming post-Hurricane Harvey
CNBC
Camden Property Trust has seen a "total transformation" of its business since Hurricane Harvey slammed into Texas, its CEO told CNBC on Tuesday. The Houston-based company, which develops and manages multifamily apartment communities, has seen ...

and more »

Exclusive Videos
Inman.com
Uncertainty is the name of the game in real estate -- right now, and always. Brad Inman took the Connect stage with Ken DeLeon of DeLeon Real Estate, Mauricio Umansky of The Agency, Dolly Lenz of Dolly Lenz Real Estate and Glenn Kelman of Redfin to ...

Motherboard en_us
Miami's Close Call with Irma May Make Climate-Blind Real-Estate Developers More Reckless
Motherboard en_us
Harvey and Irma killed dozens of people and destroyed many thousands of homes, but, we're told, look on the economic bright side.The Miami real-estate market, already blazing hot before the storm, will feed off of the temporary disruption and heat up ...

and more »

Forbes
Two Smart Long-Term Real Estate Options
Forbes
But if you think you're going to make it, now might be a good time to take a serious look at where you want to establish your business. Long-term business real estate planning means either direct ownership or long-term lease. I've covered the direct ...

OregonLive.com
Lack of homes for sale weighs on Portland-area real estate market
OregonLive.com
A short supply of homes for sale is stifling activity in the Portland-area real estate market. Despite a competitive environment where certain homes are still attracting several offers, sales for the year through August have dropped 2.7 percent ...

Thanks, Apple: Real estate apps just got a huge AR boost
Inman.com
Apple released its newest operating system today and with it a promising frontier for real estate apps looking to offer augmented reality (AR). In contrast to virtual reality (which requires separate, sometimes awkward equipment and creates an entire ...

and more »

Trumbull real estate up 3% after two periods of falling values
Youngstown Vindicator
The first data coming out of the most recent three-year Trumbull County real-estate reappraisal show an average increase of 3 percent, county Auditor Adrian Biviano says. That may seem like a modest increase, but compared to the 5 percent drop during ...

and more »

Newser
Welcome to the Depressing New Real-Estate Game
Newser
(Newser) – A story in the New Republic pronounces "a new era of real estate speculation" in the US, one that's taking a depressing toll on poor neighborhoods across the country. Two factors are at play: the housing bust of 2008, which left a glut of ...

CoinTelegraph
First Bitcoin-Only Real Estate Transaction Completed in Texas
CoinTelegraph
In Texas, buyer and seller come to terms for a home sale in Bitcoin.

and more »

Google News

Fixing Houses: Mixing Your Own Paint for Savings and Harmony

Real Estate Real Estate