|
|
|
Painting Over Vinyl Wallcoverings
I have a 1995 mobile home... excuse me,
"manufactured home". Anyway, I am wanting to paint the walls to
help a rather dismal appearance. The wall are in good shape but, I was
wondering about the surface preparation needed. The walls have a
vinyl-like covering that is typical of most older manufactured homes.
Does the surface need to be sanded and primed, or will a good primer be
sufficient?
Dusty Payne
Supposedly
you can paint over that vinyl wallcovering, as long as you do the right
surface preparations.
According to a pamphlet from Zinsser, a manufacturer of primers, you can
get paint to stick to vinyl (which probably has a little gloss to it,
and it's the glossiness that is the biggest problem) if you use their
B-I-N Primer.
B-I-N Primer is shellac-and-alcohol based, which is not like most
paints. It dries within an hour and dries harder than latex primers.
But the weird thing is cleaning up the brushes and rollers... you need
to use either denatured alcohol (rubbing alcohol doesn't work) or
ammonia.
After you have rinsed out the brushes and rollers with either of those,
you can then rinse them in water. I use ammonia because it is much
cheaper and I buy it at the supermarket for less than $2 a gallon versus
$4 a quart for the denatured alcohol. But... open a window, that ammonia
really stinks.
B-I-N is a really good product... it's the ONLY way to prime knots on
wood to prevent them from bleeding through light colored paints.
But... before you do any of that, you need to clean the walls. Just a
quick soap-and-water washing, or maybe Windex followed by a wet sponge.
Washing the walls is commonly overlooked with painting and often leads
to disappointing results if not serious peeling of the paint.
Bruce W. Maki, Editor.
|
|
