Good low VOC paint? And a rant

[emisi]

We have a little studio apartment over our garage that we rent out - 400 sq ft. I priced it well, and had a ton of interest, then one of H's coworkers asked if his daughter and her husband could move in for three months while they let the rental market shift some places so they could get a bigger place. Sure, okay.

They neglected to mention that, while we knew the wife was pregnant, they also had a second kid. And the MIL was moving in with them. In 400 sq ft. Then they asked if their dog could stay for a week while they looked for a new home for it. It stayed there 7 months. Oh, and they stayed over a year. MIL moved out when the baby came (supposedly, I think she still lived there off and on, but it was hard to tell).

The place is TRASHED. The carpet started out light beige, now it's grey. The walls are a mess, they let the kid scribble on them, and my lovely H? Only kept $200 from their security deposit. That might cover cleaning the carpet, but wouldn't replace the chair they destroyed (who leaves a wooden chair outside all year long?!) or having someone paint the walls.

So the place is now ripped up, we're getting new floors, and we have to paint. I need to help H with the painting, but being almost 5 months pregnant, obviously I need to use a low VOC paint. I want a good one though, that will be harder to mark up. Particularly in the stairwell, I'm not looking forward to doing that after every renter.

I'm also thinking of painting it Spa blue by SW. Is this a bad idea in a rental? I hate plain white walls, I feel like a nice color would be more inviting. If the next renter wants a different color, they can paint it back to white when they move out.

End rant.

[wawa]

Also KU'd - We are painting our whole house and bought SW Harmony so I wouldn't gas myself. I've only done one bathroom so far, but I like it.

I can't speak to durability though, since we just painted it yesterday.

I think painting it a color would be nice, especially if you are fine with the tenant repainting. Sorry your tenants sucked! I'd soooo be on my best behavior if my landlord was my dad's coworker. I can't imagine just trashing a place like that no matter what...but knowing it might get back to my parents? Oh hell no.

[jenjen]

That really sucks that you went out of your way to be nice and let these people rent your space! I painted a lot while pregnant and went with Olympic paint from Lowes. It's no-voc.

[pitterwoo]

so sorry that this happened to you. I helped my parents with their apartment after they did a similar favor. If your H is going to be too nice to people in the future maybe make the management of the apartment something you have and put more specifics into the lease too.

I think the VOC paints are pretty good now and haven't heard anything bad about any of them. The only one I've used is the one from Pittsburgh Paints, called PPG Pure Performance. It seemed good to me and has held up like any of their normal paints.

[candreco]

Yup, we used SW Harmony in the new house, and it wasn't bad at all.

Though if your H didn't think it was a big deal to not keep enough security deposit to cover painters, then maybe he should get to paint by himself.

[emisi]

Nov 3, 2012 19:28:18 GMT -5 candreco said:

Yup, we used SW Harmony in the new house, and it wasn't bad at all.

Though if your H didn't think it was a big deal to not keep enough security deposit to cover painters, then maybe he should get to paint by himself.

I don't think that he considered it not a big deal (it was pretty bad in there), it's that he didn't want to be a "bad guy." I'm going to be handling the security deposit from now on.

[prazenjc]

we used the low voc verson of olympic from lowes for our nursery 2.5 years ago. it is holding up well to my very active little boy.

[thiswillbe]

We used SW Harmony in our kids' first bedroom (and again in the new house), and it's held up well. We haven't had to scrub the walls of any major messes, but we've been happy with it.