OOPs, put in wrong thread. Will try to switch it.

Hey gang! Yeah...as I've babbled-about recently (hopefully not TOO much?!?!?), once you've seen an FPE finish, you're kinda spoiled...IMO. I brushed 2 coats of the ECO-Brilliant White on an UNPRIMED pallet-board that was in decent shape. (This was literally from a wooden pallet!) It looks fantastic! Beautifully white and smooth. If I had primed that board, and lightly sanded it, it would've REALLY been a thing of beauty! * The CC is maybe a little better paint than ACE's version, but it's another $15/gal more. The ACE is low-VOC, CC is not. * ACE's Cab/trim paint is ~ $30/gal. * CC normal retail is ~ $40-$45/gal. * FPE ECO runs ~ $50 for a Liter...Eurogallon (2.6 Qts.) is ~ $110. >>> HOWEVER......most people aren't around paint for long enough to do ANYTHING to their system. Sitting in traffic every day does far more harm than a few scattered hours of painting...IMO! Paintguy makes a good point...MOST people haven't seen a TRULY professional paintjob OR HIGH-Quality paint used. >>> Once you DO though....game over. >>> This is like my Hotel-Resort comparison! We were fortunate to stay at Maui's Four-Seasons resort last June. Will another hotel EVER measure-up to that? No way in H#ll. Relevance? Well....in paint & resorts....it's all in the "Eye/expectations of the beholder..." Faron

Hi, I just wanted to give a few pointers on spraying... an HPLV sprayer is incredibly useful but please be careful (or do not use at all) to spray a house. While they are far better than siphon feed sprayers, they still create a fair bit of overspray. This is fine if you are spraying lacquer on cabinet doors outside- the lacquer is dry in seconds in the air - its just dust by the time its travelled next door. But when spraying house paint, any wind will end up painting the neighbours house/car/pet/laundry...it can be a tough conversation afterwards (and can be rather expensive.) Use an airless paint sprayer for houses - much more direct spray and a heavier coat. They are cheap as well. Also, for a DIY with an HPLV, you need a decent compressor to get the right flow - the little hotdog/pancake compressors will not normally/likely support the CFM's required by a spray gun. just my 2 cents. Caspian

Thank you! So much great feedback. Sadly, the paint job is a necessity rather than just aesthetics -- paint on the back side is failing pretty badly & peeling off in layers. (After reading up on the paint forum, I think it was just too many layers of latex on top of old oil paint without adequate prep.) Maybe we will keep it close to current color. I'm not sure what color it is, but I'll have to stop by the BM store and pick up a tab for Briarwood. I think those color visualizers are just a bit off, at least on our monitor -- Down Pour is a very smurf-y blue on my screen. Luckily, SW store is right down the street. Of the SW colors, we liked Mineral Deposit -- gray, but not quite so dark. Johnmari, my wife said exactly that about warm trim looking bad with cool gray field color. I just want to get away from the current ultrawhite, just tone down a bit but not too much. Shutters? I think we will someday, after we've finished the essentials. Of course, being picky, I don't want to just screw aluminum shutters that don't match window size on there, so might be a while given that real shutters & hardware are pricey. The suggestion about doing the sash black is good--that could look really sharp and make the windows pop a bit more until we can dress it up a bit more with shutters. Absolutely agreed on the landscaping solutions. Could be more varied and it would add a lot. THANK YOU for all your suggestions, such a helpful group & nice little corner of the internet.