Art with a vengeance! Wont cover with primer!

Ok, so the long story short is that as a younger person I felt the great need to express myself on the walls of a room with all kinds of paints, sponges, patterns, rollers, splatter, finger paint, glitter, metallic paint and glow in the dark things stuck on with tack.

Now the rest of that i managed to get rid of, scrape off, or cover up with primer but there's a bit that keeps coming back with a vengeance - watercolor markers. As a younger person, I felt it grandly creative to draw rainbow colors in blocks around a window frame in the room. Now every time I cover it with primer it just bleeds back through and mocks me.

So, what do i do now?

I'm using latex primer and it has been suggested i switch to oil. If i do so, can i merely spot paint the needed area and not have to worry about my actual paint coat looking bad on two different primers?

Or do i have to start over and repaint the entire room?

 

I'd recoat walls with oil-based primer. Behr.com: Products - PLUS 10® Oil-Based Primer Sealer No. 94

Oil-based primer will seal in any bleed through from markers or other products.

 

I don't buy sharpies anymore... LOL.

I also have very creative kids but they have to express themselves with crayons, pencils, chalk, ball points, acrylics, gouache and decoupage. I fell for the marker once when the oldest was a toddler.

If the oil primer fails (I believe it won't, but I'd suggest you to coat the entire room with it), you will have to do what I once had to do: sand the wall.

Just the marker spots, though.

 

It would probably be safest to coat the entire wall with an oil base stain hiding primer but you might get by with just priming the affected spots. When you top coat with the latex, it will dry slower where the wall is sealed with the primer but it should blend in after several hours.

If the stains bleed thru an oil base primer - use pigmented shellac, like zinnser's BIN

 

I was afraid that doing the whole wall was the answer. I don't suppose there's any recourse for latex primer being essentially useless?

I got all crazy at around 5am this morning - i started this project at 5pm - and went over the walls with the final color to see if it would just hide it. Didn't work and some other spots that appeared hidden by the latex primer started to show through. It's not a tragic loss, only wasted like 1/2 - 3/4 of a gallon of the final paint.

I am really annoyed by all the time spent though, two coats of primer for the whole room and on the one wall i got two coats of paint to see if it would hide it - which it appeared to do until it really-really dried and daylight came through the window. Then bammo - it was all there.

 

When there is the potential for bleed through, you must use an oil-based primer/sealer. Sorry.

 

Is there a specific use where a latex primer is a good choice?

 

Latex primer is good when there will be no bleed through. New wood. New drywall. Latex primer improves adhesion of paint.

 

There are many different types of primers - they all have specfic uses, although some uses will overlap.

There are a few latex 'stain hiding' primers but they are marginal at best. A solvent based primer is always the better choice when trying to seal stains!

 

Small update: I went back to the store and went on a search for primer. I went straight for the BIN in a gallon can but as soon as i picked it up i realized it was like water - i could hear it sloshing in the can.

I spent all morning getting primer off me and i knew oil would be worse then latex and it stands to reason that shellac would be worse then oil. After a moment of contemplation I decided to go with the BIN shellac-base primer in an aerosol and to give spot treating a try before repriming everything from scratch.

So far, the BIN in the aerosol seems to be working. I've gone through a whole can and it's nice in that you can recoat fairly quickly - not to mention i can avoid getting much if any on myself. I have another can should i need it. The room is airing out at the moment. I'll check it in a little bit to see if anything had bled through, but my initial impression is that it's doing a better job of containment then the other stuff.

Best scenario is i can paint it with a few coats and be done - worst case i'll paint it and if the bleed is still obvious i'm going to grab some spare paint from the garage in a decent color, water it down a smidge and go crazy with a faux finish with a sponge or rag to at least breakup the pattern that is showing through..

 

What you will have to watch is that with different primers under your final coat, you will end up with a different sheen to the final. You won't see it when you look directly at the wall, but it will show up when light hits the wall at an angle and might make things look splotchy. If you still have your original primer, you might want to put a coat of that over the places you spot-primed with the BIN, then do the top coat.

 

There shouldn't be a sheen difference over the different primers - if there is, not enough paint was applied and a 2nd coat of finish will help. Paint will dry at a slower rate over oil primer as opposed to latex paint/primer.

The gallon of primer was probably thin because it's been on the shelf a long time [settled to the bottom] - the shaker will fix this. A real paint store knows to shake up the paint/primer before you leave the store but at a big box paint dept - you have to ask!

 

When I have a stain that won't cover, I spray the area with silver spray paint. I have heard that shellac also workes. Works for me!!

 

Before the advent of Kilz and similiar products, pigmented shellac was basically the only stain hiding choice. If you've ever used shellac - you know how stinky it is and can really rock your head in confined spaces. There were a # of painters back then that would aluminum paint because it was only oil base [not near as stinky] Generally the aluminum paint would seal all but the worst stains but occasionally there can be adhesion issues with the paint you top coat it with.

 

Well, the spray-shellac worked, but yes, it's insane with the fumes. After the BIN I managed to get in there and roll over the primary problem spot with a coat of paint - it covers without issues and no notable change in sheen.

I've since left the room alone for the last few days because it needed to air out quite a bit (I used a whole spray can of BIN in under an hour) and to be honest i was flat out sick of it.

My next question: Trim. Prime now or wait until the walls are fully finished? Right now i've got a room that's been primed and has atleast 1 coat of the final paint on all the walls, one wall with 2 coats. All the walls have a 2-4 inch border i need to go back in and hand paint and then of course the trim.

Which am i more likely to screw up? Overpainting while doing the wall or doing the trim? Trim is a lightly blue-tinted white semi-gloss and the walls are a sky blue flat.

 

Normally the woodwork is painted after the walls but I've found it quicker/easier to enamel the crown moulding, windows and door trim first, then cut the wall paint to the woodwork and enamel the base board last.

 

Painters Log: Day 27 of my ordeal and I still have not managed to get my room back. Couch sleeping is taking a toll on my back.

Status of the room: the walls are a lovely shade of blue called Stratosphere. The closet is kind of fudged and a bit splotchy and i have plenty of extra paint but not enough "give-a-crap" in my being. Clothing is going in front of it, the wall being a color is really just because society dictates that it should be painted and not bare drywall.

Trim is taking shape, though i'm really not doing too well with painting baseboard and sparing the carpet. I've used every means of shield I could think of and eventually the edge of the shield itself gets too much paint and i make a small movement mistake. It's likely a matter of being too impatient to wipe it down after every brush stroke.

The door is being difficult. More crayola marker colors and shame on me for half-heartedly priming it. May have to go back and reprime and repaint the whole door though i can likely spot treat. Hope to be finished with project by day 45.

 

Question: Air conditioning duct/vent cover. Paint it the same blue-tinted-white as the room trim or leave it bright white?

 

Generally you are better off not paying the HVAC grills. The factory finish will clean better than what you have to put on it. On the rare occasion that I do paint them, I spray them with oil base enamel tinted to the appropriate color.

When ever you use a shield, you must every so often take a rag and clean the paint off of it - all the paint so none gets on the backside and transferred to the carpet. You can delay cleaning a little if you practice your cut in skills and don't overload the shield with paint.

 

Update: With pretty blue walls and just a little bit of the trim to go, I took the drop cloth off of my bed in the middle of the room, moved all paint well away from it, and finally got some real sleep.

Having slept in the room, I wake up in the morning as the sunlight creeps in the window and decide to stare at the long shelf (7-8ft) on one wall. I didn't put the shelf there, it sort of came with the room. The L-brackets obviously have a decorative cover which i've been painting around and overall painting it doesn't seem to be working aesthetically. I decide i want to take it down to either paint it in pieces or simply remove it all.

The decorative covers pop off easily and it occurs to me to jut paint those and put them back on, but instead i try to take the whole shelf down. The screws into the underside of the shelf-proper come off easily and though the shelf weighs a ton and is about 8ft in the air, i managed to get it to the floor without breaking myself or anything else. I started to remove the screws going into the wall.

At the first bracket, i'm unable to get either screw to budge. One is obviously stripped and the other simply wont budge. Next bracket, i can only get on screw out. this continues until the final bracket where i can get both screws out relatively easily. I go in search of more tools.

I try grasping the head of the screws with pliers and getting them to turn with no luck. I do manage to wiggle a few of the brackets enough to get all but two of them down. The first bracket which neither screw would come out of and the second to last bracket. I get the hammer.

I try using the claw head to loosen things up a bit more. I try the pliers some more. Nothing works, and slowly i start to damage the drywall by the pressure being exerted onto it. At that point, i've decided to heck with it and start whacking at the resistent screws.

In the end, i had to literally break off 3 screws leaving their remnants deep in the cinder block because man nor machine was going to remove them otherwise. I also have lovely gaping holes in my drywall now too.

*sigh*

I'm going to Lowe's soon. They sell these lovely drywall repair patch kits. After i get those put on and sanded and primed and painted i might get around to painting the baseboard like i originally planned to be doing today.

 

Next time try drilling out the head of the stubborn screw.

Exactly what type of damage did you do to the drywall? how deep? wide?