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Tips & Techniques

Free Paint—Color TBD

By Andy Engel Issue 252 - June/July 2015
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I painted my shop this weekend, but I didn’t buy any paint. Instead, I mixed together whatever was left in the cans I had lying around, which produced a reasonably attractive latte color. If I’d had reds and blues, I would have shied away from adding them to the mix, not wanting a Barney purple. And if the mix had ended up too dark, I’d have bought a can of cheap white and added it. It was a great way to clean off my shelves while keeping old paint out of the waste stream. Plus, it saved me enough money to pay for a couple of actual lattes.

—Andy Engel, Roxbury, CT

Edited by Charles Miller

From Fine Homebuilding #252

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View Comments

  1. Lilsledge | Jan 28, 2018 08:09pm | #1

    Fine if someone wants to take the risk of ain't bases not being compatible or the various cans being in progressive states of curing and cross-linking etc. But it seems irresponsible for FH to publish this as some sort of recommendation.

  2. t01100879 | Jan 28, 2018 08:40pm | #2

    Lilsledge, you should get of your ledge. This is a suggestion from a reader in a fully open forum, not FHB gospel. Plus, it's for his own shop. In my community the hazardous waste recycling people produce inexpensive paints by combining the paint that residents drop off. They likely are more systematic about what gets mixed, but the objective is the same - reuse what we have.

  3. CivilEng43 | Jan 29, 2018 03:21am | #3

    I like to use up old materials too. Sometimes I paint stuff just to get a smooth and uniform looking surface, the color being only a byproduct. By the way, how about sharing some photos of the result?

  4. Kurt99 | Jan 29, 2018 04:07pm | #4

    I too do this occasionally. I do maintenance for a condo complex where most of the residents know that I also own rental property and often are asked if I can use their old paint. I select carefully, mostly taking whites and off whites, leaving the rest so I am not in the paint disposal business. With a careful eye, I mix the appropriate paints to end with 5 gallons of a pleasing off white which most likely will be the color of a unit until it is all used for painting and touch-ups, maybe ten years later.

    Most any latex paint can be mixed with another with no compatibility issues. The premium paints have more of the better pigments and resins, the economy paints have more filler pigments and cheaper resins. I know that I shouldn't but I would probably buy a relatively cheap paint for a rental unit, but I get mostly premium paint leftovers, giving me a better paint than I would probably buy myself for a rental. The only real problem is the next five gallon batch won't be an exact match like it hopefully would be if I bought it from the paint store.

    That is at least a few gallons of paint that won't at best be allowed to dry out before being tucked in a garbage bag.

  5. CivilEng43 | May 02, 2020 04:23pm | #5

    Last time I commented, I forgot to mention something. Years ago at a ski club lodge near Donner Summit, some college kid members did the same thing - mixed a bunch of leftover paints, but instead of painting the workshop, they painted the après ski drinking room. Came out a crappy sort of purple that these kids called puce. Afterwards everybody - even the more senior members - called that room the Puce Room. Boy, we sure had some good times in the Puce Room - and some memorable hangovers.

  6. BobboMax | Sep 25, 2020 04:43pm | #6

    I think I remember the Puce Room, although all such claims have to be taken with a grain of salt... It would have been in the late sixties or early seventies, in a Sierra Club lodge, maybe the Tappaan.

  7. Obeeswax | Sep 28, 2020 09:26am | #7

    I think this is a great idea, and have done it myself a few times over the years. When in doubt, use a color wheel. If paint is older, use some cheesecloth, or one of the specialty strainer products they have now. My Dad taught me this trick in the ‘60’s. I’m guessing he learned it from his Dad. A friend who was in the house painting business gifted me with some purple, I added white and gave it a much softer hue. When I finished painting, I used the leftover to seal some logs that were recently cut To protect the ends from checking.

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