apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I went to my local hardware store to buy a specific light pink paint and decided to check the mistints just in case. Turns out there was a very, very similar pink for $10 for the gallon. I absolutely adore the color, but one small problem is that there was no label whatsoever on the can, so I have no idea what the brand and color of the paint is. If I ever want to re-create it, I'll need to have a swatch scanned.

speaking of which...

i have 2 cans each of high quality paint (i think both are from Ralph Lauren):
a dark grey/almost black
a dark beige/brown
which have never been opened from September 2008...

i can't return them so... does anybody want them? (i'm in chelsea, manhattan)

love the image of the paint cans. What is it?

My secret is out! While I have never heard of them being called "Mistints," I do know of them as "Oops" paints, which all major hardware stores carry. Home Depot often has a large selection for $5 a gallon.

My best advice is to pay close attention to the sheen (satin, eggshell, etc) of the paint and always ask if they can open up the paint can to see not only the exact color (I've been known to compare it to swatches of regular priced paints) but also the quality of the paint itself.

In my 3 years here in New York (and countless apartments) I have used Oops Paint numerous times!

Happy Painting!

i have the same situation as saya

I have 3 gallons unopened BM eco primer
2 gallons BM Aura chantilly lace
1 1/2 gallon of BM Aura million dollar red (half of an open container that was opened on monday) 1 unopened quart...

on on the LES...

i once purchased a whole 5 gallons of custom mixed paint... couldnt return it. i cried on and off over it for a few days since id pretty much wasted my money on something i wasnt even going to use. so months went by and i still had it sitting in my garage when i found that my church was looking to paint the new nursery a color pretty darn close to what id bought. turns out i hadnt wasted my money after all. :)

Saya,

I deal with that problem by posting in the "free" section on Craigslist. Somebody out there probably wants some free paint, you just have to find them :)

My house is painted in all BM mistints and leftover paints from my previous place.

I even took 2 mistints and blended them together to get the perfect bathroom colour! My friend who used to work at a paint store said as long as the sheen matches that's fine. She also said that "Decorator white" comes from all the mistints mixed together plus white.

i have often used mistints to great effect!

and when the paint store messed up their last can of sandwash paint for me back in October, i got my "patriotic" living room out of it!

:-)

cherrybomb,

I would totally take some of that off your hands. I've been thinking about painting my door red. I'm in Brooklyn. Can we PM on Apt Therapy? I couldn't figure out how.

We should create an ATNYC paint swap! I have a bunch of BM Aura in a light gray and a bunch of white primer. I would love to find some blue gray Aura.

I was in IKEA a few weeks ago, and they had cans of paint leftover from their displays for sale in the As-Is department. They weren't gallon size, but smaller (quart, I think?) and they were only $1.99. There were tons in all colors. I wasn't looking to paint anything so I didn't buy them, but that would have been a great deal!

I would so love a paint swap!!!!

I'm going to do a mix of some leftovers to do the bedroom rather than buy new.

ooh food you can gmail me -- I am bombedpop there...

beware--the million $$ red shows orange-tinge, at least it does in the kitchen with landlord standard wood cabinets, we have to repaint another color me thinks--still deciding...

Cheerybomb,

I'd love to take all the red you've got - I have a huge red paint project I'm about to start! If you still have it, could I claim it?

Thanks! (Now, how do we go about emailing off AT?)

Another option is to look for a resource that sells recycled paint. This is paint that is dropped off for recycling that can be salvaged.

Where I live, the local program that helps people with disabilities get jobs does the work. They go through it and pick out the salvageable paint and strain it into 55 gallon drums. When they have enough, they pour it into 5 gallon buckets and sell it for $30.00 a bucket.

The color choices are limited, but it is good paint. I bought five buckets of an eggshell color to paint my whole finished basement. It had good coverage and was no different than any other paint I've ever used.

It's a green and frugal choice. Plus, the work was done by people with disabilities and all profits are used by the agency to provide services. Positively full of win!

I think there is need for a pre-cure paint swap. I have tons of paint I dont need. Anyone up for it in los angeles?

The last time I needed paint for the baseboards of my powder room, I checked the oops/mistint section of the store. I lucked out that there was a dented can of the same size and color of blank paint for sale for $2.50 that I was there to buy.

I've also bought donated mistints at Habitat's Restore. Unfortunately I didn't use a tinted primer with the dark burgandy color and ran out of paint. I grabbed a palm sander and "distressed" as a last ditch effort to save the paint job. It came out pretty good. http://condo-blues.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-create-distressed-wall-treatment.html

ooh, lots of tips! um, so craigslist to unload my paint? I will... do so immediately. and if no go, to the recycling!
*s

Sears is great for mistints. Make sure you ask for a discount if the can is dented. It can save you a few bucks.

I am a BIG fan of an AT paint swap, and was actually considering suggesting such a thing recently since i had a bunch of paint samples left over from my recent bedroom paint job.

I wound up giving my samples away on freecycle, and got like 20 responses within 20 minutes of posting, so that was easy.

I would prefer to do something over AT though, since what i had was SAMPLES. I feel like all of us wind up buying small samples to put up on the wall and determine what color works best, and then what are you supposed to do with all those 1qt or smaller cans of paint? Plus, who wants to invest like $50 on samples? I'd love to give them to fellow AT'ers. It would be really really great if there was a database of samples listed by color ... so if i'm interested in a certian blue by Behr for example, i could see if someone on AT is offering it before investing in a quart sample! :)

Thank you! I get mine from the oops pile (if you stalk it long enough, the right color is sure to turn up) but always felt like such a goober when I'd read about how people would agonize over paint chips for weeks and months before committing... I can see how when you have a specific idea in mind that would happen, but if you have a more flexible idea of what you want, oops paint is a cheap and green way of getting it!

in addition to the free stuff on craigslist, there are brooklyn and new york city freecycle lists. (freecycle.org to find them, and other cities.) i gave away several paint cans that were left in my apartment that way. as well as a bunch of other random crap.

I wanted some pale green/lime paint for a couple of small jobs. I couldn't get it in sample pots, so I've experimented with mixing artist paints to come up with the shade I want. I have some aqua house paint and all I need to do is buy a small pot of yellow and mix it with aqua to get the colour I want. Don't be afraid of mixing and coming up with new colors altogether.

I have finally made an account after months of browsing this and design sponge sites. I love apartment therapy! I am more of a reader than a writer but this sparked my interest because I just painted my living room with some "Aura Paint that I got for about seven dollars at a local paint store. It is amazing at the deals you can find in the mistint pile. I like to shop with the local family owned type places and they seem to have alot more of this stuff than I have seen at the chain stores. I cant believe I didn't do this sooner !!