Home DIY

And current... new page fail.

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Working with some waterbased paint today was a nightmare. It pretty much dried as soon as it touched the brush.

If you are using a quality paint and have a non-air entraining mixing blade and a slow speed drill, (350-500rpm), you can normally add upto 10% additional water to make a 'primer'.
Were you painting a particularly dry substrate?

making a pergola and using the fence posts, daft idea? better solutions?

There's nothing wrong with it but the wood will be fast grown shite that has been treated with some pretty toxic chemicals (worst case scenario Paris green which is a preservative mixture that contains arsenic) that can leech out of it if it when wet. If you want to paint it something like joinery grade redwood will last as well. Western red Cedar or sapele for non painting options would be nice.

It was already painted with a couple of coats of undercoat and a top coat, but I was adding a second top coat. I think it was just that little bit too warm and dry in the house.. did the other side of the door this evening and it was alright.

We bought some quick dry Satinwood rather than the normal stuff and it is a very different beast. Same issue, that it gets sticky very quickly and then becomes streaky.

I was painting a bay window with it today and it was a pain - on the flat bits I had to use a foam roller to smooth out the brush marks.

That's the stuff. I'm still not sure how much I like the finish - it seems quite plastic-looking, but it does come out smooth when it behaves.
If you're painting something vertical you have to be quite careful to apply the right amount - too little and it isn't opaque enough and the surface isn't so smooth, too much and it curtains or drips.
Also, if you're using the white like I am (does it come in other colours?) then I find it almost impossible to see where the coverage is without shining a light on the surface so I can see the reflection.
Once you've left it for a minute or two that's it - you can't go and touch it up or smooth it out, it'll just drag and leave a horrid mess. Best to let it dry and then smooth out with some sandpaper.

At least, that's my amateur hour experience with the stuff.

I think the non-quick dry stuff is a solvent base btw, so it will be very different to the water based quick dry.

Yep, I've been using the Dulux trade satinwood and that isn't quick dry and isn't water based. It's pretty good apart from the annoyance of cleaning brushes, etc

Luckily we were painting over a window frame that had been painted with a slightly grey off-white (or had discoloured horribly), and the first coat of Satinwood was really streaky, so we found it quite easy to see where I'd already painted.

Looked shit? Not painted yet.
Looked slightly less shit? Already done.

It was not the most rewarding job - I had to put up some shelves afterwards to get a sense of satisfaction for the day.

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(The brackets are too big really - original plan was for shelves the full width and three brackets, but that was changed after I'd already ordered them.)

My ceiling has a damp patch where there was a leak a few years ago. The leak was sorted then but I've never got round to covering up the damp patch. What's the quickest/easiest way to cover a 2ftx3ft patch. The room was painted about 10 years ago (white) so I guess I may need to repaint the whole ceiling.

What's the easiest way of doing this without having to spend ages covering stuff up? A big brush maybe? I'm not too worried about long-term, it's mainly just for viewings/surveyor.

Cheers

I believe Zinsser Cover Stain is the recommended base coat.

Also available in rattle cans, no brush required.

Yup zinsser was what @Airhead recommended. So that’s gospel for me 😄

I have and still do recommend it. Just on the patch and a little area around. Sometimes you can feather it into the existing ceiling, it just depends on lighting and how white the ceiling is. Otherwise you then go over the whole ceiling with emulsion.

If you want to do the job really well you wash it with sugar soap first, I use a squeegee mop for that.

Cheers all, the ceiling is just a plain white matt emulsion. Is the cover stain just white without any tint? If I could get away with just painting over the stain it would make life a lot easier.

It is plain white (at least the B-I-N is which is the Zinsser stain blocker I've used), it does match well with pure brilliant white paint but obviously won't if the paint has aged.

It's also nasty, smelly stuff - but it does its job really well.

B-I-N and Cover Stain are slightly different products. They are both oil based so you need thinners to clean the brush. B-I-N is more often used for sealing wood, I don't use it much but it's a lot thinner than Cover Stain and needs cleaning with meths if my memory serves.

Cover Stain appeared after 123 and B-I-N had been around for a while. I had a lot of success spraying Cover Stain and matching existing ceilings, they make a spray can that sprays vertically but the overspray is very fine so anything in the room needs covering to protect it. That's why I'm reluctant to recommend it. Brushing 2 coats on the stain and feathering at the edges or rolling and feathering with the roller if you can manage often works quite well.

I would guess Cover Stain is around British standard white, rather than British standard brilliant white.

Anyone know of a decent exterior grade, coloured wood stain (not paint)? Particularly blue and/or yellow. Need to stain recent garden furniture builds, but ms_com would like more primary colours than natural wod seeing as mini_com is around. Plus, there are enough other wood coloured things out there it's starting to feel like the arse end of the B&Q garden section.

I have had lots of success with Sadolin Superdec, can get it mixed to pretty much any colour (we matched a BS colour). Not cheap, but goes a long way and doesn't need multiple coats.

Wicked, I've been looking on and off but couldn't find anything like that. Cheers.

Fridge is broken. Repair man said compressor over the phone, finger-in-the-air half the price of the fridge to replace. It's only 4 months out of warranty! Thought I'd ask you clever folk on here to get a second opinion. Appears to be trying to work, but only getting down to 18 or so, so basically not.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=16GM_iYnptK9ZD2DKvVqygaTGnXwJlqb1

Is that a 1 year warranty or extended? Who did you buy from? Some places are generous when you are only just out of warranty.

1 year manufacturers only. I didn't extend because I guess I've been fairly lucky with appliances in the past, so it felt like wasted money at the time. It was Curry's, they say their repair team is closed anyway at the moment, but their assessment team is open, so trying to see if the repair guy somehow do me a report saying it was an inherent fault from manufacture. I'm pretty sure that's the only way Beko or Curry's would accept liability.

Might be some useful information here , certainly worth googling to see if others have had same issue and it could be an inherent fault.