Virginia paint company 'brings out the artist in all'

By Jura Koncius
Washington Post

RICHMOND, Va. — "Trouble in Tuscany" flashed the subject line of an e-mail received at the headquarters of Sunny's Goodtime Paint Products.

Sunny Goode, right, and Dede Davis, center, founders of Sunny's Goodtime Paint Products, are tireless cheerleaders for do-it-yourself wall-glazing. Color washes and glazes make plain vanilla walls pop, they say. Here, they check the work of paint contractor Billy Goode. Washington Post

Sunny Stack Goode and Dede Keyser Davis sprang into action, calling the customer back and talking her through the application technique. Seems that the walls she inherited in her home had never been properly primed, so too much of Sunny's water-based patina soaked into the surface. With a proper primer and a coat of any tan-colored latex paint, they assured her, their product could indeed make her walls resemble the rich, time-worn look she was after.

Another day, another satisfied customer at Sunny's Goodtime Paint, a specialty paint-finishes business located in a garage warehouse in the fashionably hip historic neighborhood known as the Fan.

Goode and Davis, founders of the 18-month-old firm, are tireless cheerleaders for do-it-yourself wall-glazing.

As professional decorative artists, the pair can command $2,500 to glaze a living room the color of translucent tobacco or sheer apricot sorbet. But as inventors of Sunny's Goodtime Paint Products, they are also in the business of showing novices how their color washes and glazes make plain vanilla walls pop: Dip a crumpled T-shirt into Buttercup Baby, Black Leather or one of 21 other pre-mixed colors and rub over the painted surface of walls, floors or furniture. Then stand back to admire color that glows with an illusion of depth and texture typically associated with painstaking layering and no small amount of money.

"We love to see people try it. That's the most rewarding part. It's therapeutic," said Goode, wiping a swath of Plainly Plum glaze on a display board in the bare-bones company headquarters.

"We wanted to show people that you should be laid back about this," said Davis. "If you get obsessive, it will show on the wall. If you relax, it will look better."

Sunny's line has three basic products: color washes that give a light pigment, glazes to give depth and aging patinas, and more earthy finishes that create the texture of aged walls. The products, $29.95 per quart, are applied over ordinary latex wall paint. One can covers 400 square feet. Stencils of their own design complete the line.

Goode and Davis, former classmates at Hollins University in Roanoke, have been spreading the word about their products by staging demonstrations in design shops and paint stores from Connecticut to Florida.

Since getting a Small Business Administration loan to launch their business in September 2001 with the mission statement "bring out the artist in all," the pair has sold more than 5,000 cans of paint at 31 stores in 10 states and online.

E-mails come in day and night to their Web site, www.sunnysgoodtimepaint.com, where they have posted photos of their customers' projects, including a powder room with French Gray Colour Wash diamonds and a bathroom ragged in Cappuccino Everything Glaze.

The duo was glazing and stenciling homes around Richmond in the summer of 2000 when they were featured in an article in Windows & Walls, a publication of Better Homes & Gardens. The phone started ringing nonstop.

"All the 250 voice-mail messages said the same thing: 'Can you send me a can of that green glaze?' " said Goode.

The pair realized a business opportunity had fallen into their lap. They wrote a business plan and applied for the $80,000 SBA loan. "We went on our gut. No focus groups. No research. But we knew there was a demand for it," said Goode.