Thursday, April 28, 2011

Progress!

I have been doing PLENTY with the house. With my typical OCD, projects-half-finished attitude towards nearly everything house-related, I have a lot on the burner (including half-finished posts!).

Meanwhile, things are blooming in Bloomington!

Outside, things are looking ok (besides our house getting shot up by a bunch of paintball gun-toting kids), so I've been making some inside changes. Like paint!

If you're ever in the market for low/zero-VOC paint, I've done a hefty amount of research in the past few weeks. In a nutshell, VOCs are volatile organic compounds that are ultimately carcinogens, i.e., toxic, cancer-causing agents. Prolonged exposure to any of these can be dangerous, even in paint form. I read that it takes a rating in the hundreds of ppm to register as toxic or hazardous to your health. By now, I've used this stuff myself; the noticeable bonus feature of low/zero-VOC paint is that it doesn't smell as long or as strong. I really didn't notice any paint smell in the evening when I'd painted the room during the day and left a window open for ventilation. Price-wise, a quart of the Valspar low-VOC was $13. At Lowe's, I found:

  • Olympic has zero VOC. Zero parts per million.
  • Valspar, sold at Lowe's, has what's called low VOC. Their paint tested at 4 ppm.

But enough of the IH lesson! On to fun stuff...
Here's a hint/shade of what's going on upstairs. The swatch doesn't do it much justice, since I'd describe it as a slate/blue color. This one just comes off as grey, but you get the idea. [I'm slightly embarrassed that I was that person, standing in front of two identical-looking paint samples and laboring over which to choose.]












For my downstairs mystery room, "soft rabbit brown." The name just kills me.












At least one of these rooms should be finished with photos by tomorrow!

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