I will echo Casey's sentiments. RL is the worst paint ever. My husband likes their colors, i hate the paint. I now have found an excellent store who custom matches ANY color from ANY manufacturer. It's slightly more expensive but a local shop here in LA and they use zero VOC tints and still get it right. I would highly recommend finding a shop that can mix from the color codes and use BM or Pratt and Lambert or something better. Honestly, I have great success with BM and I have tried nearly everything. Also using the Floetrol or equivalent is a good idea, no water, it just gums up the latex. Paint makes all the difference. You can always mix your own with tints. i've gone to mixing my own out of frustration. That and I use REALLY good brushes. I think even the first layer should go on by brush, those rollers are no good for trim, doors or furniture. A pro should have sprayed for you... About the smell- weird. I'm surprised the wood would soak that up. I'd do it myself if I were you and give the GC another project he can do to make up for the money you paid him. I think painters are the hardest thing to hire- After all my years doing scenic work and sign painting, I still cannot hire people to paint in my own house, I hire painters for rentals and for film sets. My house is my domain, i can't stand how people paint doors, furniture is even worse. If you do it yourself, you'll get it right. That's worth the piece of mind. sad. sad. sad. GC never should touch paint. ever. I learned that from my mom...

I love white. I've always loved white. It's my favorite color . . . and no comments about it actually being the absence of color; I know what it is technically, but it's still my favorite color. Because of that, we have some pretty white (well, warm cream) rooms in our home. And they work wonderfully . . . with some reservations ;^D First of all, we're not weird, uptight or O/C about cleaning. In fact, we're probably a bit more laid back than many people. We love putting our feet up on our sofas and coffee tables, read in bed on top of the comforters any time we feel like it (which is a lot, being a family of book lovers), and eat in pretty much every room except bathrooms (LOL). The reservations? Wall color: All walls are painted a warm cream color in a good quality, washable paint. Stark white, which has a blue cast to it, would be too cold and harsh IMO. The positive: our art work looks great and so do we in rooms that color. I think the right warm cream walls makes everybody look better. And, I like the sereneness it adds to the rooms. Plus, adobe walls look gorgeous painted a warm cream and most homes tend to paint them like that. here's the foyer to our MBR, as an example: The negative: our dobie leans up against the walls to catch the warm sun and leaves dirty areas on the walls. With very washable paint, though, I just wash it off but it does happen with great regularity. The reality is that it would happen even if the walls were any not-dark color. The furniture: I have two matching cream colored linen blend sofas in our living room and I LOVE them. We bought them in June 2003 and they still look great. I have them professionally cleaned every year, but we do use this room daily, to read, visit, listen to music and/or look at the views (which are killer from there). But, I would never have a white or light colored rug or floor anywhere! All our floors are brick. This is a real adobe home in the mountains of New Mexico. We track in a lot of dirt, but most stops at the mats by every door. We pretty much never take off our shoes when we come inside, though. I do have a rule of no shoes on the furniture or beds, but that's it. No big dogs on the furniture either, but this doesn't include our 11-pound Tibetan Spaniel who's an inside dog. She doesn't leave dirt, as we wash her frequently, but she does leave a LOT of dog hair. I'm not obsessive about it and vacuum it off once a week. Negatives: with white/cream sofas, you need a fabric that you can easily wash most spots off with water. Our is like that; without it, they would be a nightmare to keep clean! If you have dogs you allow to lie on sofas, white ones are not practical. If you have kids, you'd better have a family room with sturdy, dark colored furniture, as well. My two kids have always used our family room to watch TV and hang out with family and friends in. I was smart not to have a TV in the living room, but we all do head out there to read, etc. As for little kids and white, DD wrote all over my white sofas twice with a ballpoint pen when she was three and once with a stick of blue chalk. All three times required professionally cleaning, but it did come out . . . thankfully! Cabinets, etc. When we had this house built, all our custom cabs were white-washed pine (supposed to be ash, but that's another story). They looked great in the beginning, but yellowed after a while which wasn't pretty. I've since been told that the yellowing is pretty common, so take heed if you're thinking of going that route. They look dirty and /or worse quicker with fingerprints, chips and the like. They also look more casual than what we ultimately wanted. So, our family room has cream walls, but sturdy Western brown leather furniture, brick floors and a dark Oriental rug. After 14 years with the white-washed cabs in the kitchen, we had them torn out and new dark cherry ones installed. Still kept the cream walls, and brick floors and went with bright New Mexican accessories. The living room has cream colored walls and sofas, with dark tapestry throw pillows, brick floors, dark Oriental rug, and dark tables and chairs. All 3 bathrooms have cream walls, brick floors and white-washed cabs (that we still have to eventually replace). All the accents are dark colors in 2 and pastel in ours. BTW, in this pic (taken in the evening) everything looks more yellowish than it really is; it's all a warm cream with no strong yellow cast: Our MBR has the same walls and floors with cream comforter and drapes and dark furniture. I've replaced the comforter in this pic with a cream matelasse one, but it's still a white-on-white bedroom that we love. Living Room: Close-up of one of the sofas and Chloe the Profuse Shedder: So there you have an argument FOR white/cream rooms, but with reservations: washable walls and fabrics, darker wood furniture, cabinets, floors and rugs . . . and I guess, some good common sense as to if they'd work with you and your family. But, they've been working here for the past almost-18 years. Lynn

You can put latex over oil But not oil over latex. What NEEDS to be prime is bare wood AFTER it's been sanded. What needs to be sanded is any wood that is greyish in color or has checking. Primer sticks best to clean wood. Paint sticks best to a prepainted surface, hence the use of primer or the practice of painting over paint. IMHO spraying paint is a huge waste of time and paint. In no way does it matches the kind of job or quality you get from hand painting.

You know it's funny. I don't have a license to paint because it's not required in my state. I also do not have any references because I certainly do not want potential customers calling my previous customers and bothering them. I'm the best painter around. If you are looking for great painters, please try and find a friend that has used a painter and was happy. If you don't have any friends that have used painters then go into a real paint store and get some names. They will give you names of painters that have been around a while and pay their paint store bills. These are 2 good signs. Whether the cabinets should be stripped or removed and sprayed will depend on many factors. If the paint is in good condition, it may be okay to just paint over it. If there are brush marks on the cabinets that you want removed, then sanding down to raw wood may be a good idea, but this will be expensive. Two coats of high quality washable paint is standard, but painting over a green color may take a third coat.