Paint

Paint can transform appearance, it can make a style, it can emphasise desired features and partially obscure others.

Types of Paint

Emulsion

• Popular low cost matt and semi-matt wall paint
• Prone to mild discolouring if used on radiators
• Water based

Household gloss

• Oil based gloss for woodwork.
• Produces fumes during application and for a few days afterwards.
• May also be used for walls & ceilings where easy cleaning and hard wearing are required, but good ventilation during and after application must be provided.

Eggshell

• Oil based matt paint
• harder wearing than emulsion

Masonry paint

• For exterior use only
• Not for use on old non-cavity walls
• The term covers more than one formulation of paint

Limewash

• Lime putty & water
• Dead matt finish
• Limewash looks very thin on initial application, but bodies up both through drying and through carbonation over several days after application
• When extra stick is needed a tiny amount of linseed oil may be mixed in. Don't add too much.
• The term is also sometimes used to describe distemper or milk paints.

Distemper

• The forerunner of modern emulsion
• Distemper can be washed off with hot water and detergent
• Dead matt finish
• Well suited to intricate mouldings, as its easy removal avoids paint build up over time obscuring detail.
• not available in dark colours due to chalk content

Stove enamel

• A hard thick coating
• Possibly the toughest of all paint finishes
• Used on cookers, some cookware, and some goods with long life expectancy
• Relatively expensive
• Heated after application

Powder coat

• Tough finish for metal goods
• Heated after application.

Whitewash

• Whiting (chalk powder) and water soluble glue.
• Short lived
• Useful for temporary applications, such as greenhouse shading

Water based gloss

• A semi-gloss household paint mainly used for woodwork
• Durability not comparable to oil based gloss paint

Pliolite

• Matt
• Synthetic resin
• Pinholes heavily
• Longer lived than budget masonry paints

Linseed oil paint

• Takes days to dry
• Nice smell while drying
• Non-toxic
• Soaks into woodwork
• Driers (chemicals) speed up drying time but shorten paint life

Hammerite

• For metal
• Pinholes badly
• --- is better

Enamel

• Enamel is not one specific type of paint. It simply means a paint with a hard finish.
• Suited to rigid metalwork.
• Not suitable for wood

Japan black

• A high durability low cost black paint.
• Very popular during the early part of the 20th century.

Clay paints

• Only dark colours possible

Vinyl Dye

• For painting plastics
• Penetrates the surface of the plastic for a more durable finish
• Stinks

2 part polyurethane gloss

• Marine grade paint
• Super tough
• Currently around £40 per litre, plus cost of primer
• For wood, GRP, steel and light alloy
• Correct primer also required
• Complete stripping normally required before application

Preparation

General

It is possible to paint directly onto almost any household surface, but a little preparation helps ensure consistently good results.

• Remove any flaking or bubbling paint
• Clean the surface

New plaster

New plaster is very absorbent, and needs extra water for the first coat of paint. There are 2 ways to do this.

Piss coat

• Paint with a 50/50 mix of emulsion and water.

Water coat

1. Paint the wall with a coat of water. There is no need for any particular care with this, so it can be done very fast.
2. Wait 5 minutes
3. Paint with normal strength emulsion.

• This method is quicker and no paint mixing is involved.
• Gives a full strength coat rather than a thin coat.

Paints by purpose

Ceilings

• Emulsion
• Distemper
• Limewash
• Gloss if a shiny easy clean finish is desired

Walls

• Emulsion
• Distemper
• Limewash for walls subject to light wear
• Gloss for a tough easy clean finish. Not as attractive as matt paints.

Woodwork

• Gloss
• Waterbased gloss
• Emulsion can be used but tends to not wear well
• Distemper to preserve fine detail where the woodwork is not subject to heavy wear
• Linseed oil paint

Asbestos

• Emulsion
• Household gloss

Wood floors

• Paint not recommended,

Concrete floors

• Concrete floor paints
• Epoxy paints

Exterior

• Masonry paints for cavity walls
• Limewash for old non-cavity walls

Plastics

• Vinyl dye

PVC

• Household gloss topcoat, no undercoat or primer
• This chemically bonds to the pvc, giving much longer paint life than on wood.

Solvents

Water

White spirit

Turps substitute

Cellulose thinners

Paint Effects

Woodgraining

Ragrolling

Marbling

Sprayed fades

Colourwash

Paint Styles

A few familiar styles...

70s

• Weird, fantasy based and suggestive of anything other than a house
• Drug induced decor schemes.
• Psychedelic
• Overbearing purples and oranges
• Earthy brown & beige based schemes
• Simple detailless flower shapes, often in oranges yellows and browns

Earthy

• Fairly deep red, deep brown. light brown. cream
• Colours often used in panels with all colours in one room

Medieval

• White limed walls.
• Woodwork was not painted black, this is a more recent fashion.
• Black ironwork

Minimalist

• White.
• More white.

Victorian

• White glossed woodwork
• Dark brown woodwork
• Generally garish colours for the interior - this was an era in which people played with colourwashes. For example paris green interior woodwork was once fashionable. Subtlety and what we would think of as more developed taste was not the style of the time.
• Exterior woodwork black, brown, green or broken white, but not white.
• Colour washes applied to a white lime paint base.
• Floorboards sometimes painted black around the perimeter.

Troubleshooting

• A cracked paint finish is generally due to use of paint that was too thick.
• Failure to adhere may be due to surface contamination, eg with oil or grease
• Lime rendered exterior walls should be painted with porous paints if paint is wanted.
• Brickwork on old houses with no dpc should be painted with porous paints if at all.
• Stain appearance is due to an underlying stain that is (partly) soluble in the paint being used. Use another paint based on a different solvent to block the stain. If this doesn't work try a stain block paint.
• When putting water based paints over gloss, paint the gloss first with a coat of matt oil based paint. Another option is to lightly sand the old gloss first.

Alternatives to paint

For Wood

• Varnish
• Wax
• Stain
• Liming

For Walls

• Wallpaper
• Fabric drapes
• Panelling
• Wood cladding
• PVC cladding, not highly recommended

For Ceilings

• Wallpaper
• Fabric drapes

For Metal

• Polishing
• Plating
• Varnish/lacquer

For exterior walls

• Removing all paint with a stripper eg caustic
• Pebbledash
• Cladding

Paint retouching

Paint retouching may be used between repairs to extend the life of existing paint finishes. It can also be used when there is not enough time to repaint.

Paint retouching is a fast minimal cost way to make a house look in much better decrative order. The ok can be made to look good, and even the tatty can be made to look ok.

Typically a room can be decorated this way using a teaspoonful of paint or less.

1. Clean the existing paintwork. This will brighten it up as well as clean it.
2. Obtain a teaspoonful or a miniature pot of matching paint. If you don't already have the paint you need, match to a cleaned fragment of paint, otherwise you won't get quite the right colour.
3. Colour matching is critical.
4. Use an artists brush with the matching paint to fill in any chips in the paint finish.

The 2 golden rules:

1. Paint tint must never be brighter than the existing paintwork, not by the tiniest bit. The match must be either exact or the new paint should be a fraction duller.
2. Never allow any paint whatever to overlap the edges of the chip hollows. Absolutely none. It is not necessary to fill the hollows fully, but any overlap at all ruins the effect.

This method works very well if the 2 golden rules are followed, but will look like a poor bodge if they're not.

Removal of Paint

Blowlamp

• A cause of house fires and damage to woodwork

Stripping chemicals

Caustic soda

• Strips oil based paints
• Caustic soda with cellulose wallpaper paste added makes a gel which keeps the stripper in contact with the workpiece.
• Avoid skin contact, caustic burns.
• Splashes to the eye can cause serious damage over time after the incident, so any such splash must be treated properly and promptly, seek medical assistance.
• Neutralise caustic residue with a mild acid before repainting, eg citric acid.

Boiled linseed oil

Softens oil based paints

Ecover washing up liquid

• Removes emulsion paints
• Soak in a dilute solution for hours and the paint just wipes off.

Alcohol

• Softens emulsion
• Long soak needed

Acids

• Remove all lime based paints

Dip stripping

Dip stripping baths are routinely run until so weak that long immersion times are needed. Long immersion in caustic attacks the glues in the workpiece, often resulting in doors cracking apart and joints coming loose. The wood surface is also often left in poor condition after a dip strip. Dip stripping is quick but has a habit of producing poor results and damage.

Toxic paints

White lead, grey lead and red lead are well known. Some lead paints are still in use. Historic arsenic green paints are also found occasionally. The others are less likely to be encountered in house paints.

A list of some of the more common toxic paint pigments:

Flake white - lead carbonate Cremnitz white - lead carbonate Grey lead - lead monoxide Red lead - Paris green - sometimes contains copper acetoarsenite Emerald green - sometimes contains copper acetoarsenite chrome yellows - lead chromate

Less common:

Naples yellow - sometimes includes lead antimoniate Cadmium yellows Chrome green - lead chromate Schweinfurt green - sometimes contains copper acetoarsenite Paul Veronese green - sometimes contains copper acetoarsenite Cadmium reds, Cadmium orange Viridian Chrome oxide Manganese blue, Manganese violet Cobalt violet - sometimes contains cobalt arsenate Raw & burnt umber Vermilion - mercuric sulfide

Removal of toxic paints

Lead paints are common, more so on older houses. They are still in use, although much less common than previously, and are liable to have been used on buildings as recent as the 1970s.

They can cause serious health problems if handled wrongly. Arsenic pigment paints are rare, but removal of those also poses a health risk. Arsenic paints in damp locations are also a risk, as a reaction may occur liberating an arsenic gaseous compound.

Generally it is safer to leave lead paint in place and overpaint it rather than remove it. This also gives the benefit of greater woodworm resistance.

Leaded paints should be removed when necessary in a manner which does not produce dust, and traps any dust that may occur. A gel paint stripper is ideal. Lead paints should not be removed with a blowtorch or hot air gun, which create dust and disperse it into the air.

Handling of paints containing arsenic and other toxins is beyond the scope of this article.

For paint testing services, a good place to look is water testing companies, who test drinking water for a wide range of contaminants.

More information: http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk.d-i-y/browse_frm/thread/e90e9830b5080ecb/eadbad7afe47bc71#eadbad7afe47bc71

See Also

Traditional paints FAQ: http://www.realpaints.com/faq.htm