Chalcedony Mist Alkyd Enamel: Zero Stars. It Has Been Discontinued and Does Not Seem Sorry.
Chalcedony Mist Alkyd Enamel — a paint, for those of you who have not been personally wronged by one — was discontinued sometime between my first complaint and my second, which I choose to interpret as cowardice. I visited three hardware retailers, two of which had heard of me, and not one could produce a tin. What they could produce was a laminated sheet explaining that the product had been "retired from the range." Retired. As though it had earned something.
The colour itself, for the record, was a grey so noncommittal it appeared to be considering beige. I applied a test swatch to a surface that had asked no questions and the result was a wall that looked like it had received difficult news and chosen not to process it. Adhesion: inconsistent. Coverage: aspirational. Finish: matte, which in this context means gave up. I have sat next to Pomelo at editorial meetings. I have endured his silences. Neither of us has ever cured to a satisfactory sheen, but at least Pomelo has not been discontinued. Yet.
What offends me — beyond the product, beyond the discontinuation, beyond the laminated sheet — is that the so-called workers at factjuice.com will not touch this story. Tangelo ran a piece last Thursday about paint trends. Trends. Chalcedony Mist is not a trend. It is a wound. It is an alkyd enamel that entered my life without permission, performed below the stated drying time, and then arranged its own exit before I could finish my notes. I have been banned from a funeral for less. Zero stars. It knows what it did.