Painting help needed.

darragh o meara

Folks. Just looking for some advice on painting.

I’m currently re-decorating the house and went about painting a room today that had been in need of painting with a while. Problem is that there are cracks/blisters in one or two areas that when I try to fix become much bigger than expected.

Up to now the general advice has been to scrape off the loose paint, sand the edges and apply a primer type paint (Zinser peel stop as was recommended by the paint shop ) I’ve done this but once I start scraping I end up with a huge area being removed and when I start painting and it starts to dry I’m noticing more peel in areas previously unaffected so I have to start it all over again. Plus when it dries off you can see clearly where the paint peeled as it’s sitting slightly lower than the rest of the paint, I’m thinking polyfilla will fix this. At this stage it feels like I’d be better off scraping all the old paint on the walls and starting fresh..

Not being a seasoned painter is there something I’m doing wrong or could it just be a case that the last person to paint the house didn’t do it right?? House is 15ish years old and this room is being painted for the 2nd time. I’m having the same issue with the bathroom ceiling which is having cracking and peeling issues a few months after I painted it. The engineer in me is saying adhesion problems but how does one get paint to stick to effectively bare plaster first time round??

pm1977x

If you keep scraping away blisters and end up with a big patch at a different level to the surrounding areas, I would suggest sanding the edges and then using polyfilla Smoothover, it comes with a roller and a smoothing tool, sort of like a shortcut instead of plastering. It may take 2 coats and a bit of additional sanding around the edges but I found it quite handy and it takes the paint fine.


Then again, I'm terrible at DIY so hopefully someone else can advise. :pac:

darragh o meara

pm1977x wrote: »

If you keep scraping away blisters and end up with a big patch at a different level to the surrounding areas, I would suggest sanding the edges and then using polyfilla Smoothover, it comes with a roller and a smoothing tool, sort of like a shortcut instead of plastering. It may take 2 coats and a bit of additional sanding around the edges but I found it quite handy and it takes the paint fine.


Then again, I'm terrible at DIY so hopefully someone else can advise. :pac:

Thank you for the reply. I’ll have a look for that tomorrow at this stage I’m close to just giving up and paying someone who knows what their doing to do the job..

dok_golf

Keep scraping until all the loose paint comes off. If this means the entire room, so be it, if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Whatever is left, use filler to blend the edges of peeled paint in with existing plaster. Sand until smooth. Get an acrylic primer and paint entire walls ( peeling paint most likely caused by full strength paint being used for initial coat). Paint over this with 2 top coats.

Tails142

Had a similar situation, scraped the loose paint flakes then went over with the polyfilla smoothover. The smoothover stuff isn't the easiest to use and the tools that you buy with it will drive you mad, the roller especially. I used different tools I had to stick a blob on the wall and then the smoothing tool to run it smooth. I then sanded the whole wall to remove any slight track marks with an electric sander, lots of dust but ended up with a good result.

I bought a similar product for another room in B&Q, own brand stuff, total waste of time, stick with the polyfilla one if you're doing it.

pm1977x

Tails142 wrote: »

Had a similar situation, scraped the loose paint flakes then went over with the polyfilla smoothover. The smoothover stuff isn't the easiest to use and the tools that you buy with it will drive you mad, the roller especially. I used different tools I had to stick a blob on the wall and then the smoothing tool to run it smooth. I then sanded the whole wall to remove any slight track marks with an electric sander, lots of dust but ended up with a good result.

I bought a similar product for another room in B&Q, own brand stuff, total waste of time, stick with the polyfilla one if you're doing it.

I too ditched the roller early on and just used the smoothing tool to both apply and smooth. The key is not to apply too much at once and overload it so half of it ends up on the floor!