I see what you are saying based on being a professional painter, but I think Ace Hardware actually has a pretty good reputation. Between Lowes and HD, I pick Ace if it has a product that will work for me for a couple of reasons: in my experience, the employees are helpful and tend to know what they are talking about, and the products it carries tend to be of decent to better quality, though the selection may not be as great. At the bigger box stores, in my experience, I have a hard time finding an employee to help me, period. Then, when I do finally get someone, I may as well NOT have, since they aren't that helpful! Plus, the selection of products may be huge, but the quality is terribly inconsistent. In my experience with paint so far (and this is my first full house painting experience) the SW store seems to have a mix of employees - some who do know what they are talking about and some who don't seem to know. Case in point, I needed ceiling paint and asked the SW employee to help me in my selection. I told him I was using flat on the walls. Based on the employee's advice, I ended up leaving the store with a 5 gallon bucket of satin finish in Dover White only to find out that Flat finish is pretty standard for ceiling paints (from this forum, actually). So, we got flat, b/c the satin had too much shine. As a homeowner, I don't necessarily have greater expectations from a name brand. I would actually much rather have a few options presented in different price ranges with an explanation of the differences in each paint and make a decision based on that. I actually think that American consumers are moving away from the automatic assumption that the name brand is better - thus the proliferation of "generic" items next to the name brand items... IMO, Cheerios are delicious, but I can't really taste a discernible difference if I buy the "generic" brand. Although I can with generic Lucky Charms... :) I guess that's the reason you test! cheers, ~kpk FWIW: Shoes and purse are selected for quality construction, materials, comfort and longevity! My Mom always said those are things people notice 1st, and that since people (rightly or wrongly) tend to make assumptions (however incorrect or correct) on appearances, it behooves you to present a clean, tailored and "put together" appearance. Plus, there's the whole price per use equation (she also taught me this) - if you buy a $500-1000 purse and use it for many years (she has - a Loius Vuitton that was her bag when I was in diapers 35 years ago, and she still has, and it still looks great) than it's price per use is actually quite low. If you get a cheaper, typically trendy purse that lasts for 2 months before stitching, etc., falls apart, and it looks bad, then the price per use is actually quite high.

Faron, Thank you so much for writing back right away. You are so knowledgeable and generous with your time. I just want my walls to look nice and I was afraid if I skipped the primer, the paint may not stick. These forums (especially Michael) has taught me how important it is to prep the walls before painting and I can see how nice my other walls look by following this advice and making sure my painter did what I told him to do. But my bathroom was just painted and I am not changing the color much at all. I guess it is my fault for taking a shower too soon in the room and not putting the fan on in the room after each shower since I have no windows and that is why the paint is now streaking. All the other rooms look great and the other bathrooms have no problems that are rarely used. I do have the guest bathroom that I can take showers in for one week. I rarely use it since I like taking showers in my master bathroom with the glass doors than in a tub with a shower curtain. I only use that bathroom for guests or to wash my little doggies. I guess for one week, I can use the guest bathroom to shower in despite a little smell from my doggie's puppy pads in there. I guess I should feel blessed that my townhouse has 2 1/2 baths and has a lot of room. I just keep the puppy pads in there since in the winter time my spoiled little 5.8 lb Maltese, Sassy does not like to go outside. My other little doggies will go outside in my fenced in backyard on the stones but not the little Miss Princess Sassy who has always been like this knowing her cuteness will win out. I am just changing the color slightly since the BM Navajo White is only slightly less yellow than the Deep Cream and the Navajo White which I feel will go better with the bone colored Jacuzzi and the two bone colored sinks and the bone colored toilet, as well as the taupe tiles up the sides of the Jacuzzi and shower stall. The extra gray in the Navajo White surprisingly does not look gray to me in that room but warms the walls up and takes away the lemon cast that to me just did not look right against the taupe tiles. They are so similar in color and the formulas show it (Navajo White has 4 Less Units of Oxide Yellow and 4 more units of Gray and 1/2 extra unit of Orange than the deep cream color but otherwise they are so much alike in formula) but the room will then appear less lemon but still happy and bright and be semi-gloss like I wanted since I have no windows in it and I want to be able to clean it easily when I brush my teeth and get my walls dirty. I love my new pictures and my new olive towels and new olive rug and I feel they will go better with walls that do not have that lemon cast to them. I guess I should ask the paint store for a "liquid deglosser" and they will know what I mean? I can degloss part of the bathroom except for the tallest walls I will not be able to reach even with a tall ladder since I am not quite 5 feet. Maybe I can do what I can before painter arrives and he can do the rest. I think he is not that tall either (but much taller than me) but has tall ladders and long poles for his rollers. I had the painter tint the primer deep cream last time for the deep cream room and bone white tinted for the bone white room. I guess that was not really necessary since the colors are so light. The painter used the Deep Cream tinted primer for the Philadelphia Painted room telling me it was not worth going out to buy new primer. I wonder if this is why that room turned out more yellow than I had thought it would be.

I forgot about this thread! Paintgal... Is your RL "Merlot"-color a Flat? DEEP tones in many Flats will burnish fairly easily. Reason: There's SO MUCH pigment relative to the "coarser" binder-resin that's inherent to a "Flat" paint. Paints with more of a sheen resist this better. >>> I'm assuming it's been dry/cured for some time??? RedB... >>> Make sure you let your paint cure a day or so b4 a load of steam hits it!! >>> What sheen did you get?? >>> FULL cure for washing is 1 MONTH. I know Decorpas post was over a yr. ago, but we've NEVER had THAT complaint!!! ...but then again...we're using the ACTUAL RL paint/ACE formulas...not getting it matched down into Super-spec or something...like some painters feel the need to do... >>> Our RL colors are spot-on! >>> Many customers need to make sure they SPECIFY the ACTUAL BRAND APPLIED in their painting contracts...IF that's what they desire. >>> Then there's no doubt about the colors/result. >>> If colors or tones seem off...it's NOT the store's fault. It's usually a contractor who just took a liberty to match into "their preferred paint"... I've heard this statement b4... "We applied the color they wanted & it looks off..." We dug a little deeper, and lo and behold...it wasn't actual RL paint used! (I wonder why I have "some" gray hair...;-)) Faron

There are different grades of paint even within a certain "line" (contractor grade versus homeowner grade). I'd imagine that to keep the cost of the sample quarts down, they used the cheapest paints/chemicals (whatever goes into making up paint) possible. They certainly wouldn't want someone to use a sample quart as real paint and then be so dissatisfied with the long-term quality of it that the paint quart got "bad-mouthed" about to other people, so that's why they issue the disclaimer. I'm very happy that they offer the cheaper sample quarts--I went through over 30 of them in choosing colors/shades for our new basement last year! When we built our house 10 years ago, the contractor sent us to a regional paint company that they use. They didn't have "samples", so you had to get actual quarts of paint--at $12 a quart, I didn't sample very many! That is also what kept me from choosing different colors in separate rooms--it was hard enough getting the right "overall color". I agree with mqmoi--I'd rather pay $5 for a SW sample quart than $4 for a small BM sample. Even when I wanted to sample a BM color, I took it to SW for matching, but then I was painting 2'x4' pieces of drywall as my sample boards--I needed much more than a little patch of paint on a wall to decide. Tracey