Save Money on
Remodeling Projects with Oops Paint
By Jeanette Fisher
One great way I've found to save money, whether
for making over homes we're planning to resell or
sprucing up those we plan to rent, is by using
"Oops" paint. The paint is cheap at our local
hardware store or home improvement center, and it
works beautifully... while saving us significant
amounts of money.
Oops paint is paint that has either been mismixed
at the store or has been returned by someone.
There's nothing wrong with it, since it's
generally the same kind of paint we'd normally buy
for our painting projects anyway. The key is that
it's paint the store wants to get rid of, and they
find willing buyers in my husband and me. We can
often bargain on the price, as well, since they
know we'll be buying quantities of their oops
paint in the future.
There are also stores that specialize in oops
paint and excess building materials. One of our
favorite sources for oops paint is the Habitat for
Humanity for Humanity thrift store, called
Restore. They generally have quite a selection of
paint to choose from, and the prices are very
reasonable.
Here's an example of how
we save using oops paint. We once bought a
five-gallon bucket of light blue flat paint for
$10. We don't know why the paint was returned, and
we didn't care. There was nothing wrong with it at
all. We then added nearly a quart of a semi-gloss
paint that was much darker, which cost us
seventy-five cents. We took that paint, which was
now a sort of slate blue, and used it to paint one
room upstairs.
After we'd finished that room, we added a gallon
of off-white satin paint and proceeded to paint
the next room. We then blended in certain
quantities of other oops paints we'd bought to
give each upstairs room a slightly different feel,
even though they had all begun with that one
five-gallon bucket of baby blue paint in the
beginning. Having the bedrooms all based on that
same original color gave the entire upstairs a
harmonious feel, and we were very pleased with the
results--and the money we saved!
A word of advice: if your walls have
imperfections, they'll show up more if you use
gloss or semi-gloss paint. However, satin finishes
are a good choice for rentals, because they clean
up better than flat paint when you're getting the
home ready to show to prospective renters. That
could mean that you won't have to paint every time
you change renters, which will save you even more
money!
If you're painting for resale, there are many
buyers, especially those with younger children,
who will appreciate the easy clean-up that satin
finishes make possible. It can be used as a
selling point when you show the home. You don't
have to tell them it was oops paint, of course!
Perhaps you don't care to save hundreds of dollars
in paint if you're going to make thousands of
dollars on the resale of your property. That's
perfectly fine. But for me, every dollar we can
add to our bottom line, the better--and oops paint
does just that!
Copyright © 2006 Jeanette J. Fisher
Jeanette Fisher teaches
beginning real estate investors five steps to
making money in any market. Her interior design
secrets help investors sell houses faster and get
top dollar for sales or rentals. No-cost ebooks
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