How many times have you painted a new piece of wood trim, old cedar, water stains, grease or ink that only to see that same stain bleed right back through? I've personally tested how many times it would take to paint a water stain with normal latex paint before it would fail to bleed through. I stopped at fifteen! Latex is unable to handle many common stains.
Follow the punch list below for solutions to the toughest bleed through issues.
- Grease around the oven. Step one is to scrub the walls with comet or any bleach based abrasive scrub with a scouring pad. Rinse the abrasive off with Trisodium Phosphate solution (A degreaser and deglosser). Prime with oil based primer. Paint with latex.
- Water stains, ink, crayon. Prime with oil based primer. If all else fails, you've washed it and primed and primed it again and it still keeps returning you can implement the nuclear option and buy a spray can of dark grey rustoleum. I also use Sherwin Williams Pro Block frequently for spot priming but I have yet to find anything that dark rustoleum couldn't kill.
- Tannin Bleed from your seventies interior cedar shake basement remodel. Once again you have to use oil primer. You can buy Valspar for $30.00 or Kilz for $15.00. It's identical. How do I know this? Well I don't for sure - but I can tell you from experience they smell the same, taste the same, produce no discernable sheen difference when applied next to each other. They're the same. Bin 123 is another good oil sealer, it's $20 per gallon and is slightly better than Kilz. It has superior hiding and isn't quite as likely to drip.
And finally some tips on painting with oil. If you're not a professional painter buy cheap brushes and roller covers. The solvent required to clean them costs more than you are going to spend on the sundries to begin with. And besides, what are you going to do with a left over gallon of mineral spirits anyway? Where some nitrocellulose gloves too. Latex paint will come off of your skin; oil primer will not. Really won't look that great at the office on Monday.
