Why choosing Resene paint colours has been a frustrating experience

I've mentioned previously that choosing colours for our villa has been more difficult than anticipated - and also a lot less fun than I thought it'd be.

Why?
Numerous reasons!

• Light colours look a lot darker in reality than they do on the paint charts.
• Dark colours look a lot lighter in reality than they do on the paint charts.
• Some paint colours don't even resemble their colour swatch. (We thought we'd found the perfect swatch colour - "Iron" - a neutral tone. In reality, it was very blue... Resene staff agreed that the real colour doesn't match the colour swatch.)
• I got a bit stuck after "Iron" not being the colour we wanted. Thankfully the helpful staff at Resene Wairau Park suggested an alternative - "Half Surrender"... I would never have discovered this colour by myself, because it isn't even on a paint chart!!
• Some of the test pots I bought were half empty and had obviously been already used. They were nonetheless sold at full price. But it's not worth driving across town to complain about a $4 test pot!

Above: a test pot of "Licorice" I bought at full price, but it was half empty (and with paint around the screw top) when I got it home.

In total I bought approx. 17 test pots to choose 2 colours. Thankfully I'd been coupon-clipping for a while (look on the back of supermarket till receipts for "Buy 2 get 1 free" test pot offers from Resene), so that helped the finances a bit.

Above: test pot madness! All this to choose 2 colours ;)

I guess if I didn't care so much about the colour, or if I were better at choosing colours, the exercise would have been a lot simpler. But both Mr Kiwi and I are quite specific about what we like, hence the prolonged exercise!

Oh, and I downloaded the 2 (free) Resene iPhone apps during the process too. Save yourself the time, they're not very helpful. One didn't even work and just gave me error messages!

My favourite Resene store: Wairau Park. The friendly staff there helped us choose both the colours for our villa.

Other Resene stores worthy of a mention: Birkenhead, for being the only store to suggest I get a Free Resene Card (which gives you discounts and other goodies). And Ponsonby, for being the only stores to have the free "Create Your Own Colour Scheme" Sheets with a villa on them.

Least favourite Resene store: Takapuna - the young guy there just didn't want to know or didn't want to help. (He was so rude/abrupt to the guy in front of me it was embarrassing just being in the store!)

Painting the fretwork

Mr Kiwi is doing a fab job of painting the fretwork I bought the other day.

It's a mighty fiddly job, but Mr Kiwi is using his kiwi ingenuity, as the pic belows shows.

He's used 2 nails to support each piece - and has been letting them dry like that.

Each piece of fretwork is getting 2 coats of interrior/exterior undercoat, and then an enamel top coat.

Above: Two nails are used to support each piece of fretwork as it gets painted.

Choosing exterior paint colours for our villa

I thought that choosing exterior paint colours for our villa would be fun.

I was wrong.

I've already been to Resene at least 5 times for test points and advice, and we still haven't finalised our choices!

I'm finding that the paler colours look far darker on the villa weatherboards than they do on the paint chart; and the dark colours (for the trim) look paler in reality than on the paint charts. And not all the test pot colours resemble the colour charts. Grrrr!

Which explains why part of our house looks a bit rainbowtastic!

Above: trying paint test pot colours. (The photo shows just how badly our poor house is in need of a lick of paint!)

In fairness, Resene do have great resources available.

For starters, they've got a guide to Heritage paint colours, for people wanting to use authentic paint colours that were in use in the era when their house was built. The eras are:

• 1840 to 1870: Early Colonial
• 1870s to 1890s: Mid Victorian
• 1890 to 1914: Late Victorian and Edwardian
• 1914 to 1945: Dominion

More information on heritage colour schemes is on the Resene website.

A surveyor reckoned our house was built in 1916, making it "Dominion" era, but according to the Resene information it's more likely that our house is Late Victorian/Edwardian in style... maybe our surveyor was a couple of years out.

These heritage paint colours are, um, quite strong, and not to my taste.

So for us, that's nice information, but we'll be choosing something a little more contemporary!

Above: Resene's Heritage Colour Palette.

In one Resene store I also found this A4 sheet where you can colour in a villa piccie. (I've only seen this at one Resene shop - I've never spied it at any others, so if you're wanting one it might be worth your while phoning around.)

Resene have a similar tool on their website too, where you can use your computer to "paint" a picture of your house, but personally I find that one a bit too fiddly!

Above: "Create Your Own Colour Scheme" sheet from Resene.

Notes on NZ Paint for UK Expats

• Resene is arguably the most popular paint brand in New Zealand (not Dulux).
• Paint here seems VERY pricey compared to the UK: both exterior and interior paint.
• Paint in NZ has to be super durable to cope with the hard UV light conditions in this part of the world. Which probably explains why it's more expensive.
  
• Kiwis don't understand the British terminology of "emulsion" and "gloss". Instead of "emulsion" (water-based paint) they say "acrylic". And instead of "gloss" (oil-based paint) they call it "enamel" - which is available in a variety of finishes: gloss, semi-gloss, matte, etc.

I hope I've got that right... I'm still learning!

Oh, the number of times I've gotten strange looks by asking for "emulsion" paint etc... and the people employed in NZ DIY stores aren't that helpful to chicks who don't use the proper (NZ) terms for things! I hope to spare you that embarrassment and belittlement!

Landscaping the garden

I've decided that clearing the garden is a job for chainsaw-wielding professionals: it needs a serious blitz!


Before: this border was over-run with ladder fern and weeds.

So recently two of the team from Ace Landscapes spent a coupla days pruning, mulching and weeding the garden. They took away 3 huge truckloads of garden waste with them - and there's more to go!

This is Part 1 of re-doing our garden: getting rid of the stuff we don't want.

(Part 2 will involve getting a landscape plan drawn up so that there's a scheme to work to - and Part 3 will consist of implementing this landscape plan, which will probably be done in stages... so keep tuned for the progress!)

The guys did a great job... it would have taken Mr Kiwi and I more than a week (probably more like 2 weeks) to do the work that the Ace Landscapes team did in a day or two. Man they worked FAST!

The only problem with the much-emptier garden was that it revealed just how badly the paint on the fence along one boundary is peeling!


After: the border is looking a lot less cluttered - but it's revealed the peeling fence!
So last weekend Mr Kiwi and I made the most of the great weather and picked up a 10L tub of fence paint (British Paints - 4 Seasons) for about $130-ish from Mitre 10 Mega and blitzed the fence.

The colour we used ("Karaka") is a very dark green - it was exactly the same colour that was there before. It's a really easy-to-live with colour, as it's not too green (so that you'd be thinking, ew, that's really green) and not too dark (so as to be sombre). It makes a really nice backdrop to the lush green of the tropical plants in our garden.


After: the freshly-painted fence AND a weed-free garden. Lovely!



Above: unfortunately Minnie the dog ended up sporting a dab of "Karaka" on her (no, we didn't use her as a roller! She just has to check out everything we do very closely! And it was too nice a day to shut her away inside!).

Fortunately the paint is water-based so it washed off beautifully and she is perfectly white again :-)