Painting and Great Deals!

We recently decided it was time to paint the inside of our house.  The kitchen was in great need of painting, and the rest of the house had an interesting array of colors (not bad, just not what we would have chosen)!  We are renting, so we have not wanted to spend the time or extra money just to change colors.  However, after living here for 2 1/2 years, we decided to go for it.

Jason had built the kids a doll house a couple of years ago, and there was almost a full gallon of yellow paint left over.  It is a bright yellow, and we were not sure if it would be too overwhelming in our small kitchen.  I also new that the dark country blue that was in our kitchen would need either primer or extra coats of paint to cover it up.  So, I began with the bright yellow intending to purchase a softer yellow to finish the final coat.  After all, it was not going to cost us anything to get started because we already had the paint.

We also began looking for discounted paint at Lowe's and Wal-Mart.  You can get really good deals on the mistint paint as long as you are patient and not extremely picky about color.  We found a semi-gloss "Shetland Grey" (which is almost white) for the walls in our kitchen.  You can not even tell it has any grey in it unless you hold a bright white up to it.  We paid $7.48 for the gallon (half price).

This week while Jason was purchasing supplies at Lowe's for one of his handyman jobs, the kids and I decided to check the paint aisle.  We had already looked the week before so I was not expecting much.  However, there were 2 gallons of a light beige color (just what I was looking for!), and both were marked at $5.00 per gallon.  It is the Valspar Signature Color.  When we went to check out, the original price was $35 per gallon.  I paid a total of $10.98 for $70 worth of paint, but that is not the best part.  When the cashier rang out my purchase, there was a $5 mail-in rebate per gallon that printed out with the receipt.  All I had to do was fill out my name and address, pay for a stamp, and put it in the mail box leaving a grand total of 2 gallons of high quality paint costing me $1.42 (tax and a stamp).

We will be painting our whole house for under $15 in materials (when we get the rebate back)!  I have almost finished the kitchen.  I will post before and after pictures as soon as I am done with each room.