What a guy does with his money when he's not spending it at Disney

Maybe, but the color is from Sherwin Williams originally. I forget what color name they gave it. I recently repainted it with the same color, but used Behr paint instead from Home Depot. They color matched it.

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OT: because I am like that.
For decades I was a paint snob. It was Sherwin-Williams or nothing. And I love to paint. I have been known to repaint a room after just a year or two because I wanted to try something new.

A few years back I had to move two of my girls into a shared bedroom situation. I needed to paint a single wall orange. I did not want to pay $50+ for a can of paint for a single orange wall which would have a bunk bed hiding most of it anyway. I went to (gasp!) Wal•Mart and bought a can of Glidden. It was $19. I figured I’d probably need 3 coats because it was “cheap paint” but reasoned I had a whole gallon and one wall.

I have not bought Sherwin-Williams since. I was blown away with how well it covered. It was so smooth and didn’t need more than a normal two-coat application. I have used it again and again and again. The ONLY negative is that they have far fewer colors than Sherwin-Williams or B. Moore or Valspar or Behr. They claim they color match, but I have never tried.

Back on topic.

We put down a similar floor in my son’s room last year and plan to do so in some of the other kids’ bedrooms this year. I am still a die-hard carpet fan, so our room will stay carpeted. DH said it was light years easier than when he and his BFF put down Pergo in our old house 20 years ago. Back then you had to GLUE it!

Weirdo. I never, ever take a thread off topic. That would be…rude. :wink:

Yeah. Early on, I bought Sherwin Williams. But since I discovered Behr paint from Home Depot (particularly their Behr Ultra Paint and Primer), I don’t bother with Sherwin Williams. I like the Behr paint much better. Easier to work with, covers great.

Well, we have kind of boycotted Wal-Mart, so we never go. But Home Depot also carries Glidden as their “budget paint”. I tried it once. Hated it. Despised it. Will never buy it again. It was like applying water with food coloring added, not paint. Now, to be fair, they have since updated their formula, so perhaps it is better now. But I’m sticking with Behr.

Our kitchen cabinets, however, I went with Benjamin Moore. I did some research, and supposedly their Alkyd paint is the best, which is what is needed for kitchen cabinets (unless you go with an oil-based paint, which I refuse to even attempt!). It looks great, but it was a HUGE amount of work…and it still has a tendency to wear off in places. So, it is by no means perfect.

I did my daughter’s room last year in laminate, and will do the other two kids’ bedrooms in laminate eventually. What I learned, however, was don’t cheap out on the underlayment. I’m sorry I went with the cheaper stuff in my daughter’s room, because it is SUPER loud. The underlayment for this new flooring was nicer (felt) and it is AMAZINGLY better. So worth the extra cost!

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I do get this. And we may soon too. But we boycott Target and our Kmart closed. I’m running out of places to buy toilet paper and towels. :wink:

We did get the better stuff for DS’s room which is right above the kitchen. It is loud enough with the high end stuff. I can’t imagine louder. He needs an area rug, but after he leaves for college in the fall it will be a daughters room and we will pick one up then.

LOL

Once you find a paint you like, stick with it til they change it! Everyone has unique mannerisms in applying.

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Oh - I painted the cabinets in our laundry room last summer and used General Finishes Gel paint. It was so much work but they are stunning. Only time will tell how well it lasts.

Speaking of being off topic…notice the hutch right here:

image

Interesting story about that.

When my wife and I were getting married, being poor and, well, poor, we were taking furniture from anywhere we could. Anyhow, some old family friends of my wife’s (and by “old” I mean that literally) were replacing the dining room table and hutch they had gotten when they got married, which was, I as understand it, a hand-me-down to them as it was, and so they offered it to us. We gladly took it. Only the finish was all beaten up. So I spent a good portion of the summer before our wedding stripping it and then refinishing it as well as the dining room table. We lived with both for a great many years before the table just really couldn’t hold up any longer under our growing family. But the hutch remained.

Anyhow, it has been restained, and finally repainted to match the kitchen cupboards when I painted those, and still going strong. Other than the drawer handles and paint finish, it is all original. They just don’t make furniture like that any longer! It is well over 100 years old.

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Yes!
I have my grandmothers buffet, china cabinet and table. She raised five sons. My mom had for a decade and now DH & I have it with my six kids. The table has been retired to my basement and only two chairs are left, but the other pieces are still alive and well. We even bought a glass hutch for over the buffet bc we couldn’t find anything nearly as acceptably made when we looked (that we could afford) in mid-2000’s.

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When we were getting married, being poor, and, well, poor, we bought a table and four chairs for $200 from a garage sale in La Jolla, CA. If you have to buy second hand that is a great place. to do it! So it was very nice stuff- Drexel- but I also just loved how it looked as it was genuine mid-century modern. So I owned that style before Mad Men made the sixties cool again. Now it’s worth a few thousand $$ but I’ll never let it go. I found four more matching chairs on Ebay about 10 years ago and am about to reupholster all the chairs for our new house.

Here it is: Drexel Profile

My dad was an electrician and knew where all the good stuff was stored in people’s attics and frequently offered to take old pieces off of people’s hands, as a favor, you know. :wink: So I grew up around antiques and have kept them all. My sis didn’t want them, and now she regrets it but they are real treasures, and no, they don’t make them like they used to! In fact, I have to call my contractor today and tell him to omit some bookcases and change plans for a wall because I HAVE to have a place for my old stuff. In particular, a large beautiful buffet with a big mirror and shelves, it looked like hell when I got it but under about 5 layers of shellac was beautiful white oak. Solid as a rock.

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They do, if you’re willing to pay for it. There probably weren’t as many cheap options for furniture 100 years ago, so if you wanted a table, you got a good table. I’m not sure when particle board was invented, but it made things much cheaper. I’d be willing to bet that the cost of a dining room table and chairs 100 years ago adjusted for inflation was as much or more than a good quality set today.

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Yes, and no.

Take La-z-boy. It used to be built to last. In fact, we still have a La-Z-Boy chair in our house that was originally my parent’s. It is working great after about 35 years. Only the upholstery needs to be redone.

But the methods of building those things today has completely changed, the quality coming out of the same company is such that they don’t expect people to keep them for more than 10 years and last. Yet, they still cost about the same (adjusted for inflation) as they did back then due to the name recognition.

It is true, you can find quality furniture…but it is priced well beyond the reach of most people because they no longer have the volume of sales that once was the case since everyone goes for IKEA furniture, etc. (Hey, if you notice, there is IKEA furniture in our house. The red arrow points to an IKEA coffee table, and the blue arrow points to an assemble-yourself product similar to what you’d find at IKEA, only I got it through Wayfair.)

image

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I agree. Stuff just is meant to be disposable now sadly.

Now. My friend just had a whole bedroom set made from local craftsmen. That might last. But she also paid five figures. Um. No way.

Another way to look at it isn’t so much that it is made to be disposable, but that some person figured out how to take advantage of what used to be nothing but pure waste (saw dust and such that is now used to make particle board-based furniture). The result is that, yes, isn’t as durable, but it is reducing overall waste in the system (fewer trees cut down, and those that are are utilized more fully). It also ends up being cheaper as a result. So, there are trade-offs, for sure.

I was going beyond furniture, as well, I guess. Who repairs vacuums, TVs, and stereos anymore? It’s just a widespread difference. DH has repaired some appliances in the last decade -dishwasher and wash machine- and even getting parts is an exercise. He’s been told “they aren’t meant to be fixed.” :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Ah. Well, yes. This is true. :slight_smile: In fact, when my wife and I were looking to potentially replace our existing refrigerator, I kept reading through reviews and how no matter which brand you picked, people were complaining about how it died after a few years, etc. The (non-commissioned) salesman at the store told me that they expect so much failure, which is why they expect people to pay for the extended warranties now. You buy an appliance without it, you are gambling, but if you pay for the extended warranty, there is a good change you’ll just end up with a “free” replacement a few years down the road. (If, by free, it means paying for the extended warranty long enough to practically pay for a new one!)

That’s true. I have a kitchen table and chairs that we have used- hard- for over 20 years. It, too, is solid as a rock, but I got it at a real furniture store and it cost so much that the salesman asked me if I wanted to go home and talk to my husband first.

Hahahahaha!

They don’t ask people THAT anymore (I hope). So some things have sure changed for the better. When we move in the next year or so, I hope to hand off that table & chairs to another young family who will appreciate it. It will last them 20 years, too.

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But it’s disposable furniture that ends up in the landfill. My son is currently obsessing over having to furnish an apartment because he MISSED the deadline to sign up for on-campus housing (maybe I should cross-post this in “Stupid is As Stupid Does.” )

His brother (also a loser in the missed-deadline housing sweepstakes), said don’t worry about it, order everything from Overstock, they’ll deliver it to your apartment and when you’re done you can leave it or throw it away. It is that cheap.

You can also pay for it with a CC that doubles your factory warranties. I have a Chase Sapphire that does, and I think DH’s Amex does, too. We have definitely used that feature. Now if I just had a credit limit high enough for a car…

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The trick is to get your furniture for free when everyone else is moving out and leaving it behind. Lots of abandoned furniture can be found around college campuses when graduating students move out.

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IMO, paying extra for quality always pays off, even if you have to hold off on a purchase until you can afford it. There is an old saying that a rich man can live for less money than a poor man. The idea here being that a poor man will pay $40 for a pair of boots that he will have to replace at least once a year, whereas a rich man pays $400 for a pair of boots that lasts him a lifetime.

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I totally agree, but it’s really hard to communicate that to people sometimes. We’ve lived in our current house for 25 years and (hopefully) we’ll live in the next one that long. I want to know about warranties and longevity and my contractor looks at me like I’m nuts. Heck, I have faucets that are almost as old as he is! I just replaced a Grohe sink stopper because it corroded after 15 years, and yes, it was free because I had the receipt. So I have to pester him about handing those over to me because I expect to have to collect on a few of them. But the worst mistake I made was listening to my interior designer when she advised me to get engineered hardwood floors instead of the real thing.

I don’t want anything with electronics, if at all possible. They don’t last. But when you go looking for mechanical controls for an appliance these days- you’re into $$$$ if you can find them at all. It’s worth it, though- if you’re not going to move. I think everyone just expects that you will but I just hate moving more than almost anything except long lines at WDW :rofl:.