Is that beautiful paint job from two years ago starting to show its age? It’s not your fault. Normal household activities like cooking, smoking, or even small water seepage can cause discolorations on ceilings and walls. You’ve probably got half of a can of leftover paint around your basement. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to paint over the stain and end up with walls that look like new, right?
Wrong.
The truth is that if you don’t take time to properly prepare before painting, ugly stains can bleed through before the paint even dries. If you’ve got grease, tobacco, or water-related discolorations in your home, you’ll want to take a look at these tips on painting over stains.
Tips On Painting Over Stains
1. Start by cleaning the stained area fully. Soap and water work for many stains, while grease, mold, and oil-based discolorations will require bleach. Waxy stains like crayons may need to be sandpapered off. This is best done by hand. If you must use WD-40, you’ll need to clean that off separately after the crayon is removed.
2. Let it dry. We can’t stress the importance of this enough. If the area to be painted is not completely dry, disaster awaits. Depending on your local humidity, drying can take two hours or two days. Grab a nice long book, and wait.
3. Oil-based or enamel primers are least likely to allow stains to bleed through and are well worth the effort when covering stains. Dark discolorations may need multiple coats of primer. Avoid latex paints and primers, and let each coat dry fully before applying the next.
4. Wall liners may be the very best pro tip on painting over stains. Wall liners are inexpensive and their ease of application is on par with traditional wallpaper — with no matching. Simply clean your wall, let it dry, then apply wall liner. When that dries, your wall becomes a tabula rasa just waiting for your design ideas.
5. If you are repainting sections of wall with leftover paint, keep in mind that sunlight, time, and cleaning can cause paint to fade. You may want to consider choosing a whole new color.
Ugly stains don’t have to be a fact of life if you keep these tips on painting over stains in mind. With some preparation and a little patience, your walls and ceilings can look magazine-cover ready.
Call In The Pros
Not everyone is confident with a paintbrush and paint. Those individuals are encouraged to log on to TalkLocal and put out a search for a qualified painter. A search that would normally take days now can be taken care of in a matter of minutes through our site.
