The Great Flaking Paint Disaster of 2016

In our home, the previous owners painted a 4” wide border around the ceiling in the living room. On that border, there were a few small spots where the paint was flaking off. On a Saturday morning a couple of weekends ago, my wife was out of the house for a couple of hours, so I thought I'd surprise her by touching those spots up.

I grabbed some sandpaper and set out to accomplish what I should have been a 5 minute job only to find that wherever I touched the sandpaper to that border, the paint fell off. In huge patches. It was terrifying. Everywhere the sandpaper touched, a silver-dollar-sized section of paint came loose from the ceiling and fell to the floor like huge a snowflake. I would sand in ever expanding circles, expecting (hoping) to find some section of paint that was still stuck to the ceiling, but no. No matter where I sanded more and more flakes started falling. At that point, the kids came in, saw the mess on the floor and all the missing paint on the ceiling, and said “Mom’s going to kill you when she gets home….”

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The Fabric Softener Fix for Stripping Wallpaper

On August 28, 2015, we finally closed on our home in Fruitport, Michigan. Being a short sale, Patrick and I had been waiting since late February of that same year to sign the documents, solidifying the closure. I knew it would be months before we could move in, even after the closure, but that was the least of my worries. We were inching closer to our ultimate goal of remodeling a home. Standing two stories tall, half brick-half vinyl siding, attached garage, on just shy of an acre, seven bedrooms, and three and one-half baths, we were eager to start our adventure in reconstructing and cosmetically reconditioning a three thousand square foot, 1970's retro home.

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Simply White: Making Home Feel Like Home

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It's old news, I know, but the color of 2016 is white. Yeah. White.

Oh, technically it's #OC-117 Simply White from Benjamin Moore, but, for all practical purposes, it's white.

And that seems so profoundly... boring. White? The Benjamin Moore color system is home to over 3,500 bright, soft, wild, calming, deep, muted colors and the best they could come up with for 2016 was white?

A few months ago when the news came out, I thought it was crazy. The bold joke of some group of color professionals at Benjamin Moore who just didn't care anymore. A group of people who, while sitting around sipping designer drinks, decided collectively: "let's go into that meeting tomorrow and tell them white and see what happens! It'll be hilarious!"

Yet, instead of being laughed out of whatever official color meeting took place, nobody got the joke and white was officially enshrined as the color of the year. 

White?

That's what I thought, anyway.

And then I saw some of the photos Benjamin Moore was using in their promotions. I read some of the explanations, the stories, the Narrative (with a capital "N"). And it started to make sense. Here are 3 reasons why I've changed my mind on Simply White.

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