Lessons learned the hard way

I want to pass along some things I learned this week. I hope it will save someone from going thru the same aggravation I did.

We had talked for some time about painting the living room. It hadn't been done since we moved into the house five years ago. Linda had picked out the colors. Saturday she left for 10 days in the states, so I figured it was the perfect time to paint. It should be pretty easy. I painted our house in the states a number of times. Hell, until I retired again two weeks ago, I was in charge of maintenance for a hotel here on STX. I know what I'm doing. So I thought.

So Saturday, I dropped her off at the airport, made a beeline for Gallows Bay Hardware and bought some very good (or at least very expensive) paint. I figured I would paint one wall a day. That way I would have plenty of beach and bar time. Monday I painted the first wall. It went just like I expected. A couple of hours and I was done. It looked great and I had plenty of day left for myself.

Since the first wall went so smoothly, I decided to paint two walls on Tuesday. It took me about 5 hours. I was a happy camper. One more wall to knock out and I was done with six days left with nothing to do except lime. I got up Wednesday morning and was horror struck. The two walls I had painted on Tuesday were all bubbled and peeling. Damn. I guess I hadn't prepped the surfaces as well as I thought I had. So I scraped off all the blistered and peeling paint, feather sanded the edges, washed the walls again, and repainted them. This took all day and most of the evening on Wednesday. I was pooped, but felt certain this was nothing but a minor glitch.

When I got up Thursday morning I expected I still had one more wall to paint, but that was OK, I had only lost about a day. When I walked out into the living room, I just wanted to sit down and cry. The same walls were blistered and peeling again, only worse. I was totally bumfuzzled. Being the semi-intelligent guy that I am, I just sat down and began to think about what could be going on. The only thing I could think of was that perhaps the walls had been previously painted with oil based paint and I was using latex, and that was causing the problem. So I go back to Gallows Bay Hardware, buy some expensive primer and more very expensive paint. I came home, scraped all the bubbled and peeling paint again, sanded both walls with my palm sander, and washed the walls again. I looked around. There were paint chips and dust all over everything. Oh well, I just have to clean it up. I put the primer on the walls. By this time I was very tired and frustrated, so I decided to stop for a while and go visit my friendly local beach bar.

I'm sitting at the bar, drinking a beer and telling my tale of woe to anyone who will listen, when the guy two chairs down says he has had the same problem. He asked me if they were outside walls and were they concrete? The answer to both questions was yes. He said that outside, concrete walls wick moisture thru the concrete and there is no paint on the planet that will stick unless you sand and primer them first. Why couldn't I have run into him two days ago?

So, I go back home, look at what are now my properly prepared walls and paint them yet a third time. By this time I have worked on these walls or over twelve hours. I am one tired puppy. I went to bed.

I got up this morning and the walls looked super. I cleaned up all the mess from the sanding and scraping. That took about four hours of mopping, vacuuming and dusting. I painted the last wall in about 90 minutes. I am finally finished. My simple little paint job had turned into a nightmare science project. Instead of leisurely working as I wanted to, I had worked for 5 days, averaging about ten hours per day. Not what I had planned.

Here are the lessons. If you live in a concrete house, the walls to the exterior of the house (or toward the cistern) will be slightly damp. You can't feel it, but they are. Sand them down. Wash them. Primer them. Then you can paint.

Tomorrow the beach.

Ric