When Good Paint Goes Bad

I still can't believe how expensive getting a professional painter is. While striving to keep things pretty and practical, we decided to paint the place ourselves. Armed with drop clothes, Bud Lights, brushes, rollers, latex gloves, and other necessities of life, we set out to paint.

Bud Light: The unofficial sponsor of Renovation 2013

We completely skipped the step where you have to wipe down the walls. Per the sage advice of my favorite viral video: Ain't nobody got time for that.

We began with the ceiling (did not bother with primer).  One of my Sane Renovation Rules is: Don't let perfect be the enemy of the DONE, so sometimes you just have to do it.  I had never painted a ceiling before, but I had watched a lot of Youtube videos about it, and followed the instructions to paint across the body so you're not hurting your back.  I did my cut-ins first with a brush (a fancy term I learned that means get your booty up on a ladder and hand-paint the corners so you don't mess it up with your roller). I didn't think the ceiling was really that hard. I also really liked the consistency of the ceiling paint. It was nice and thick but easy to move around. I bought the cheapest white I could find at Lowe's:

For the walls, we used one coat and primer and two coats of white paint.  When I bought the primer, I seriously considered buying the paint and primer in one to save time, but decided against it because I didn't want to risk messing this up. I bought a super heavy 5-gallon container of Olympic paint in Antique White.

When the first primer coat dried, and I began to paint Antique White, I had a total and complete freak out because it was clearly NOT WHITE:

Apparently, Antique White is really beige!  Who knew?  Thank god The Yankee was able to take it back to Lowe's and exchange it for true white. He totally saved the day.

While waiting for the paint to be exchanged, I added a second coat to the ceiling drink a Bud Light. The paint was marked "Low VOC" which is supposed to be less chemicals released into the air.  It didn't really smell less offensive than other types of paint.  I won't be buying the Olympic paint brand again because I found the paint to be really difficult to work with. It dried in grey streaks, causing a freak out with every brush stroke. The streaks dried ok enough, but the paint was oddly thin and hard to work with. 

Before:

After:

I'll never stray again from my first love, Benjamin Moore.  I've learned my lesson.

What lessons have you learned in your feeble attempts to cut corners?