I just spent a hell of a lot of work removing some old flaking paint from my basement floor in readiness to refinish it. I stripped, washed, etched, and primed the surface as per instructions, but now I've put the first coat on the surface, it's drying with a crackle effect that I can't work out. The only thing I can really think that could be to blame is the behr concrete bonding primer put down as per instructions before the top coat. I even repaired some holes in the concrete after the etching process, and these areas too have the same crackling, ruling out acid residue (And I washed and mopped the HELL out of it after using the stuff too). The concrete was bone dry before priming. Any suggestions? I'm actualy feeling rather down about it. Its taken weeks of stripping and preperation in my spare time to get it this far, and unless it just needs a second coat, it seems to have failed. It took two gallons of klean-strip 15 minute stripper and thorough scrubbing and washing with each 3'X3' section before drying to get the old finish completely off...Days of work. Could it possibly just be that it needs a second coat, or is this wishful thinking? The concrete below is still showing, so a second coat would have otherwise been needed, but I'm also trying to not through good money after bad if theres just no way to get a decent finish. Rob.

i'm using simple 1x4 boards as ceiling molding and 1x8 boards as baseboard molding in my house and i'm concerned about how well the paint will be able to hide knots in the wood. i plan to fill the knots with wood putty and prime everything before painting with an off-white semi-gloss latex. a friend warned me that the knots in the lumber will seep through the paint in couple of months no matter how much prep work i do. should i be concerned? is there anything i can do to ensure that the knots will remain buried? as for my lumber choice, my options were limited because of the size (esp. the 1x8s) and style of wood i wanted -- i want the edges to be sharp angles, not rounded as most molding tends to be. do i have other (better) options for lumber? i haven't put up molding everywhere so i can still make some changes. thanks