Mistinted again

Maybe you've figured out by now that I'm cheap. Or rather, I LOVE to get things for very little money. After all, that's how I painted my bathroom for $10, right? Well, my quest for cheapness doesn't just contain itself to the inside of the house, it also goes outside.
For years I've wanted a child sized (but not too mini) picnic table. I've seen them for sale at flea markets and outdoor furniture places for waaaaay too much money. Why, I ask myself would you want to pay $100+ for something that your kid is going to bang on with a fork, dent with a shovel that he's not supposed to have, crash into with his tricycle, and drive Tonka tractors off ?? why?
I have no idea. So that means I have to result to other means (not midnight thievery, by the way) , Trash day scope out, Garage sales by people with teenagers, and maybe even an estate sale. Well, I also always pray for things like this too. I firmly believe that my God does care about the little things in life.
As you can figure, one day, at a "my kids are too big for this" garage sale, I happened upon the perfect small sized table!! And just how much do you think I payed for this treasure?? Just guess.... Did you say "Five dollars??" Well, you should've, because that's how much it was! I crammed it in my delightful Suburban and hauled it home. There it sat looking "rustic". It wasn't ugly, it was just well seasoned. I knew I wanted to paint it a lovely shade of red, but once again my "frugal-ness" took over. I decided that I would wait to paint it until I found the paint in the mis-tint section. Surely, someone would think that they wanted red paint and then say "Oh My Herbert! This is just too shocking, we must take it back! ", then they would forge a scheme about how it "just wasn't right" and take it back. That's how a perfectly good paint gets to the table (usually)...(in my opinion)...(in my mind). Well, red paint is pretty popular 'roun hee-ya, so it took a whole year for me to find it for $5 on the table. It was right on time since Brian was re-staining our deck I knew I had to paint the table, the deck would make my "weathered" table look beaten and trashy!
Finally, one evening I set out to begin.... One coat....oh my, that's quite pinkish....I'm sure it will darken once it dries....... hmm, maybe another coat will help........
After two coats my picnic table was a deep, rich, shocking pink....no, not red, but pink. (sickeningly close to magenta) I let it dry overnight, that should help, right? Wrong. Pink at night, is pink in the morning.
So, after all that, I realized I was actually going to have to buy a real can of paint. ugh.
Well, it wasn't so bad really. It was double of what I paid at first, which hurt. But, then I learned from the nice paint man at Lowe's that the can I bought should not have even been on the table. Ever. It wasn't just tinted wrong, the employee had applied the coloring to the wrong base paint. THAT's why it was wrong. Really red paint must be tinted with a red base, not a white base. (This is the Lesson learned twice now by a certain Lowe's employee. Who also now has learned NOT to put his mistakes on the mis-tint table.)
After re-painting over the pink two times.... no, not because it was hard to cover, but because we got a freak 4 minute rain when I was done with the first coat of the new paint. After I finished shrieking, Brian helped me carry the wet table through the kitchen into the safety of the garage. That's where I got to paint it for the 4th and final time. Now its done and on the deck with a pretty little geranium looking oh, so cute.
The birds haven't even started targeting it yet. (Which, by the way, seems like a very legitimate fear) Also, no new fork holes in the paint... but, we'll see how long that lasts.
Next step, buy more of the same color for the Adirondack chairs that my Dad made me and paint them too.
Oh, in case you're curious the paint is... Valspar, Heirloom Red