A while back I had to demo a kitchen cabinet to allow a new fridge to be
moved in...  I was in a time crunch and didn't have time to go to a real
paint store that day so I went to That Orange-Colored Store and had them
mix me a quart of paint.  I took with me a vent grille that had been
painted over to color match.  The guy tried, and even wasted a quart on
his first try when it came out too dark (color is a flat white tinted
slightly blue) second try looked good in the store but when I painted
the wall it ended up slightly more brownish-grey than the rest of the
wall.  (I also used almost the whole quart just to cover the area that
was behind one large kitchen cabinet...)

Unfortunately this @#$@#$% color is on about half the walls in my house,
and I have a couple other little areas that I'd like to address
(changing light fixtures in living room and removing mirror over mantel;
repainting ceiling at top of stair landing where it was badly prepped;
painting kitchen ceiling where I demo'd an ugly fluorescent fixture and
never patched/painted the ceiling) but we're not quite ready to repaint
any whole rooms yet.  So I would really like to have a couple more
quarts of paint matched to the existing so I can keep doing spot repairs
as I get motivated and not have the house look all ghetto and have
primer spots all over the darn place until whatever room gets a full
repaint.

Today I had a dentist's appt. in the AM so I left early and hit the
closest "real" paint store and brought the same vent grille with me.
They "matched" it while I was visiting with Dr. Hook and I picked up two
quarts (they used Benjamin Moore base.)  I just opened one and spread a
little paint on the corner of said vent, it looks like a pure white in
comparison.  Not even anywhere near as close as the paint I got from HD.

The few areas I've used the HD paint don't look awful, but it's obvious
that there's a paint mismatch.  Is that about the best I can hope for
(in which case I should go back to HD and get a couple more quarts of
the same thing I got last time,) or should I take everything back to the
real paint store and let them try again?  I realize you can't see what
I'm working with so you can't really say "that's about as good as it
gets, you're being too picky, just deal until you repaint" or "you can
do better than that, you've just had bad luck with paint guys" (but I
guess that's kind of the feedback I really need)

Not sure if posting pics would help, but if it would, I can take a pic
of the last little spot I did, around the thermostat on the kitchen wall...

nate

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