As you can see I have PILES of paint!! This is somewhat not surprising as I do own/operate my own mural painting business. But even still a lot of this paint has just been accumulating and is too old to be good quality (I prefer not to use paint that's more than a year old unless it's been stored really well).
And besides the reason of the paint being past its prime, there's an even better reason to get rid of it. A few months ago I made the switch to zero VOC materials...both for my work and for our home. I've spent too many years breathing in nasty fumes laden with benzene, formaldehyde, heavy metals, and who knows what else. It's not worth it to me to endanger my health with the products I use. Not to mention my mural clients and often the children and babies who's rooms I paint. Normal paints off-gas for several months or longer and create bad indoor air quality (we won't even talk about carpeting, wood products, or household products...). So for our home I've been using zero VOC Yolo brand paint for all the walls, and good quality low VOC Fine Paints of Europe brand paint for small areas such as trim and our kitchen cabinets. We also use a zero VOC primer by American Pride. It's really fabulous to paint a space and not smell a thing...or feel like you need to exit the room in order to breathe!
The other lovely thing I have to mention is the present Jared brought home for me yesterday - what a sweetie :o) He was telling someone at work how difficult it's been finding a proper fitting respirator for me. All the ones at the hardware stores are huge on my face. Well what do you think they did?? They gave him one to take home for me to try - and it's fits me perfectly!! And can you believe the terrific colors it has? I'm loving the royal blue, magenta, and gray combo. Gotta appreciate a great color scheme :o) Thank you SO very much!! I really appreciate it.
I'm off to finish processing the paint into more manageable sizes. Tomorrow we'll take it to the toxic waste recycling drop off. It feels really good to be moving on from it all.
xo, devon
Ps: Here's a sneak peek at how my studio floor turned out...I LOVE it! Can't wait to move back in...
3 comments:
Wow, that is a lot of paint! The floor in your studio looks gorgeous - you guys did a great job :)
I was explaining to someone the other day about how toxic your average can of paint is.
I don't think she believed me.
Have you re-done all your house's walls in the low VOC paints?
Baby R's room is the only one of ours that has the good paint.
Hmmm, well my studio and jared's office still have martha stewart paints on the walls. The others rooms are Yolo happy.
I loved those martha stewart paints - the colors were fab. But I have say they were never great quality. It's Yolo or nothing these days for us (& 'fine paints of europe' for trim).
One thing we've loved too is using a zero VOC primer - we have a 5 gallon container of 'american pride' primer that's almost gone. That's actually another great paint brand we like.
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