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MT (Mr Ballistic)
Ordered from Graham & Brown because they seemed high class, but, turns out any cod or kipper can make themselves up to look kissable -- doesn't mean that they are. Was drawn to yellow. Don't feel this much was a mistake, yellow feels right for now, but does have the feeling of madness associated with it, like a... dayroom décor. Either way, received the paint within a day or two of ordering, having ordered on the Saturday or the Sunday, which was astonishingly fast. Applied my undercoats of standard other brand paint, twice 'round. Then came to opening a tin of the stuff - Lilium. Looked like something had seriously gone wrong, like spoiled milk or mouldy something-or-other. The inside of the lid had dried paint in different tones on it and the paint in the can was blotchy and just plain disconcerting. It's my first time decorating, just a novice here, so I thought maybe that was how paint might be, high class paint. Not one to be put off, I stirred and stirred, so that the yellow might come through, and it did, although questionable as to whether the colour quite matched the rug, so to speak. But it'd been a while - three months - since I'd chosen the paint and seen the images, so who was I to judge? The free colour card I'd requested - for kicks - didn't even include the colour I'd chosen, so, no referring to that. A bit shady. Tin's open, may as well crack on! It's a treat to slap on and feather... I had some doubts while I was painting, about the tone mostly, but after a day of applying it to one wall at a snail's pace, and once it had dried and settled, and the sun had set, and I had settled down for the night and risen with the sun and set eyes on it again, I had changed my mind and warmed to it. Started realising pretty pronto that the tin, 2.5L, wasn't gonna do me, despite them, Graham & Brown, indicating on the tub that the paint would cover the dimensions specified with two coats, or at the least one. Didn't even bloody make it with one. Not only that, but the colour of the paint was streaked, mixed, multi-toned, the closer I scraped to the bottom of the barrel. At first I thought it might be nice, add some flavour, some texture, some different tones, that the sunlight would catch and light up, sort of golden hints and tones of-- It honestly looked like someone in the factory had dropped from the gallery a caramel chocolate bar, or squeezed a dollop of caramel out of the bar into the paint and eaten the chocolate. Other tones were creamy, white, peachy, terracotta, possibly burnt saffron, come to think of it. Honestly, what the heck are they thinking? How can they call themselves experts at paint when they can't even mix the stuff? Or is it the machinery in the factory, a malfunction, as it continues to squirt, for a few seconds or so, the paint before into the tin of the paint thereafter? I kept going. As I say, I thought it might be interesting, add some enigma, to the extent that anyone coming to my room would think, caw, this kid's an artiste, what skill! I really thought it could work a charm, but then I started to notice it really wasn't working a charm. Patchy. I hadn't thought it out. The darker tones were not beautifully, artfully laced in, flaired into the tapestry of my paintwork, but instead incidentally reserved for the lower right side of the second to last wall, and a bit here and there and elsewhere on that same wall, so it looks like I've at some point started to paint over the lighter yellow in a different shade, or vice versa, and then abandoned that idea. Great. Well, anyway, maybe it'll be OK, I con myself. Proceed. Onward! Hmm. Be lucky if I get the room done in one coat before I'm out of paint. And the tops of the room around the arches, that hasn't been finished. The last wall, the tones were the darkest and have come out sort of golden, sort of like, having now seen it, the burnt saffron that this very company sells. And I didn't even finish the last quarter of the last freakin' wall. So, I have two walls with drastically differing shades that probably don't even exist in the universal paint palette, or cosmic colour chart, to match it up to finish the work. Embarrassing. Had to turn the lights out and hide, so no one would see me through the window. Happy accident though, think I'll make the last wall a feature wall, paint it darker yellow or golden, change it up, but need to find something that will be satisfactory. [What a mistake this turned out to be; more Graham & Brown misadventures!] The bleedin' tops of the walls around the 'wainscot' arches however... that'll need to be matched, and if the shade they sent wasn't the shade I bought, god knows how that'll end up looking. What a pain, is all. It was afterwards I saw countless reviews on the internet, and some dodgy ones here too [the G & B website], implying a lot of incompetence and shoddy practices and policies. > The one that best sums up my experience, the people who ordered 'thunderstruck grey' and got purple, or vice versa. Bumbling businesses. And who do we blame when no one can get anything right? When you can't trust what you're paying for? We're only just coming out of the EU. Can't blame that, but can say we've been dependent on others for too long. No one has any skills now. No one has any artisanal ways about them. Maybe it's time. Est. 1946? Prove it. Make your parents and your grandparents proud, and so it goes~~ [Ordered more paint after, in two sample pots, to try and finish the last wall, shade sent was of course not matching and could never be matched. Had to repaint the 'feature wall' in white with Valspar and then ordered what I suspected could be the shade - either 'Burnt Saffron' or someone else suggested it was more like 'Lioness' - and that was wrong (and, frankly, a horrendous shade and coverage), it also smelt like cat piddle, exacerbated by the temperature, when the sun hit the wall or the window was open, and I had to sponge the wall down with white spirit vinegar to destroy the bacteria or whatever was causing the noxious smell. After this, Lioness, I decided I could not stand the shade and have just repainted the wall, white, two coats of Dulux, and have opened the tin of Burnt Saffron; applied a bit, to be sure, but same smell, greasy, oily, drippy, water-based, watered-down rubbish, a worse shade than the Lioness, like tan schizophrenic wall smearings or used diaper contents, and really not anything like the website comparison or how it looks fresh in its tin. Graham & Brown are a crooked, thieving disgrace. Possibly a slow fall into administration. I am stopping, I am fuming, more ways than one, with this noxious, 'eco-friendly' nu-toxic paint (or neuro-toxic, from the feels of it). Gonna vinegar and white over that test patch, which is luckily just a top corner, and get some farrow & ball or some other brand, or at this point just regress into a feral state and finger paint (colourful hand imprint) the wall, make it arty and stress-relieving, and never look back.
3 years ago
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