It can be quite intimidating walking down the paint isle at Home Depot. Especially for someone like me who hates to paint. It is not that I do not mind the work. It is that I have been around some people who can do it so neat and fast. I feel like I am back in kindergarten doing figure painting.

I was ask to the cost of paint to paint a room in a clients home. So my first stop was Home Depot because it was the closest to where my client lived.

The room to be painted is 10′ x 14′ with 10′ ceiling. It has one window 4′ x 6′, and one door 3′ x 7′.  That gives a total surface area of 1,355 square feet. There is 41′ of baseboard trim and another 17′ around the door.

Because this is a room in the nice part of the house a good quality paint is desired. I was pointed to Behr (pronounced Bear) by several painter friends.

Now, I stopped in at Home Depot shortly after 8 am, on a Thursday morning. I figured that I could catch the sales staff sharp, fresh, and ready to answer my questions. I was wrong. There was no one there in the paint department. I could not find anyone to answer my questions. So I started snooping around to find the answer to questions myself.

I found some literature on the different types of paint. All the different types of paints almost rivaled the choices in colors. I was not worried about colors because I knew with today’s computer color matching systems. It would be easy to match any color I wanted.

When I got home I went to my computer and looked up the Home Depot website. There I found a lot more help. There was very detail instruction about what I needed to know to paint most any room in a house.

It took me a while to find a painting calculator, on the website. After pressing the “Calculate Now” button, I was told that I needed 2 gallons of wall paint, 1 gallon for the ceiling. This was based on 350 square feet per gallon.

Using my number I would need 3.87 gallons of paint. That is almost a gallon less than was I figured.

Still I have not found out what kind of paint or what it will cost me. A brief scan of prices when I was a Home Depot show a gallon of Behr Flat Interior paint was going to cost me from $26 and up.

Bottom-line: So far I can tell my client to expect to pay over $100 in just the wall paint. Customer service at Home Depot, at least at 8 am in their paint department stinks. I got more help by going online. If I am going to buy my paint from Home Depot, I will have to go back at least one more time to finish my recon there. Maybe much later in the day.

I don’t think my experience is an isolated incident. When I went to MeasureUp.com, there was a lot of negative comments about Home Depot for their customer service. Could they be headed the way of the old CompUSA.

I got the following email from Home Depot the day after I wrote the original post. Thank you Home Depot for your response.

“From: Stephanie, Home  Depot <stephanie_care@homedepot.com>

Subject: Paint

Hi! I’m Stephanie with Home Depot Customer Care. I saw your blog about your attempt to purchase paint at your local store. If you are still in need of pricing and any other information, please email me at stephanie_care@homedepot.com.

Please include the store location you were shopping as well.

Thanks, Stephanie, Home Depot Customer Care”

Tags: Behr, Home Depot, MeauseUp.com, Painting