Match Paint

Author: Dave
Date: 01.07.22 - 1:10pm

Short story. New house trying to match old paint, no cans left for the driveway color. Pro has paint rep come out and test paint, says its a solvent based (xylene) paint and wants 1600. Seems steep.

Ok, so now I know what to use..how to match it. Borrow a fan book from Sherman Williams futz with it a long time, get close. Color right but to bright. I am bad with these things. Good in some lights.

I want a perfect match, cant exactly cut out a block of driveway to bring to them. I put some acetone on the driveway and use a chisel to scrape up some paint chips. Then melt the chips in acetone to get a paste.

Paste on cardboard and tile. Tile sample was to thick and didnt dry right so they used the cardboard sample. Color mix looked close but came out to brown, probably leaching from the cardboard.

I figure I am out the $60 for the bad mix. Take a new sample, same technique but now on a wood stir stick. really dissolve the chips good and smear the paste on thin.

Go to the paint store, he asks for the old gallon (which I had even manually mixed in the first lighter paint to try to lighten it up). He said no worries go get it we can adjust it.

He proceeds to work some manual match voodoo and damn if he didnt get the color perfect to my new sample.

No charge adjustment, I was amazed.

lessons:

So for matching solvent based paints, scrape up chips and dissolve
dont put sample on medium which might leach.
they can manually adjust colors if they are wrong first time (real paint store not home depot)
dried brushs for solvent paint, will become usable after soaking in the solvent paint again.

Well I am blessed that all worked out perfect. Short story worth sharing.