Painting & Finishing

I'm repainting a bedroom that's currently a dark navy eggshell and the customer wants a light off-white. How many coats am I looking at and do I need to prime?

What grit sandpaper do I use between coats of a waterborne enamel on kitchen cabinet doors, and what am I actually trying to accomplish with that sanding?

I've got a 1990s house with cedar siding that was stained years ago and now it's weathered gray and chalky. Customer wants it painted solid. What's my prep and primer?

I'm bidding an interior repaint with a lot of drywall repairs. What's the difference between spot-priming the patches versus priming the whole wall, and when does it actually matter?

The steel handrails and columns on a commercial job spec say SSPC-SP 3 before primer. What does that mean in practice and how do I know I've done it?

An engineer's coating spec for a water tank says SSPC-SP 10 with a 2-3 mil angular profile before a zinc-rich primer. How do I hit that and prove it?

What's the difference between dry-to-touch, dry-to-recoat, and full cure on a paint can, and which one matters for putting the second coat on?

I'm spraying interior walls with an airless. What tip do I run for latex wall paint, and how do I read a tip number like 517?

How do I back-roll when spraying new drywall in a house, and why bother?

Customer has a bathroom ceiling with mildew spots. How do I deal with that before I repaint so it doesn't come back through the new paint?

I'm painting factory-primed fiber-cement lap siding on a new house. Anything special about it compared to wood?

Painting a new stucco house in Jacksonville in July. The GC says the stucco was finished eight days ago and wants color on it by the weekend. What's the correct approach?

I'm doing a two-tone job where the wall color meets a ceiling color at a 45-degree vaulted line. How do I get a razor-straight line with tape and not have bleed?

How do I test whether an old glossy trim paint is oil or latex, and why do I care before I repaint it?

What caulk should I use around exterior window trim before painting, and when in the sequence do I caulk?

I'm spraying a two-component polyurethane on some metal doors. What does 'pot life' and 'induction time' mean on the TDS and how do they affect my day?

How do I figure paint quantity for a 12x14 room with 9-foot ceilings, two windows and one door, two coats on the walls only?

The spec says the epoxy floor coating must go on a concrete slab that passes ASTM F2170 at under 75% RH, and the GC wants to know why a plastic sheet test isn't good enough. What do I tell him?

What's the right way to clean and store a good nylon/poly brush and a roller cover after latex paint so they last?

I'm staining a new pressure-treated pine deck. When can I stain it and what type of stain holds up?

I do residential repaints. When does the EPA lead paint rule actually apply to me and what do I need to have?

On a 1965 house I just need to scrape and repaint one windowsill inside and about a 3x4 foot spot of peeling on the exterior. Does the RRP rule kick in for something that small?

I'm doing an RRP job stripping the exterior of a pre-1978 house. What does the containment need to look like and what's flat-out prohibited?

My crew is going to be dry-scraping and heat-gunning old paint on a commercial building that tested positive for lead. What does OSHA make me do for the workers, apart from EPA's rules?

Painting a two-story exterior off a 28-foot extension ladder. What are the OSHA rules on setting it up so I'm not the guy on the incident report?

We're putting up frame scaffold to paint a three-story stairwell atrium, working platform about 22 feet up. What does OSHA require on the scaffold itself?

I want to start a painting company in Clay County, Florida and pull work on my own. Do I need a state contractor's license, and do repaints need a permit?

I keep xylene, lacquer thinner, and a few gallons of oil-based primer in the back of a customer's garage during a two-week commercial job. What are the OSHA storage rules on a construction site?

Crew is painting a stucco exterior in Orlando in August. They start on the west wall at 1:30 PM, surface temp is well over 100°F in full sun, and they're rolling a 100% acrylic satin straight out of the can. By 3 PM there are lap marks and the paint looks like it's dragging. What went wrong?

A painter is refinishing a set of oak kitchen cabinets. He degreased with a rag and some dish soap, scuffed with 220, and sprayed two coats of a waterborne alkyd enamel with no primer. Two weeks later the paint is peeling off the doors near the stove in sheets. What did he miss?

New construction, interior. The drywall crew finished Friday, the painter sprays PVA primer Saturday morning and two coats of eggshell Saturday afternoon and Sunday, and moves on. Monday the builder walks it with a flashlight and every seam and screw row is visible as a shiny band. What happened and whose problem is it?

A crew is coating a structural steel mezzanine outdoors. It's 62°F, humidity 91%, and the dew point is 59°F. They finished blasting to SP 6 at 8 AM, broke for lunch, and started spraying an inorganic zinc primer at 1 PM on steel that's been sitting since morning. What's about to go wrong?

Painter is doing a 1962 ranch house exterior. He sets up a gas-powered pressure washer at 3,000 psi with a 15-degree tip and blasts all the alligatored old paint off the wood siding, letting it fly into the flower beds. Then he plans to hand-scrape the rest and repaint. What's the problem?

A homeowner wants a bathroom ceiling and walls painted. The painter buys a flat ceiling paint and a matte wall paint from the contractor line, paints Friday, and the customer showers Saturday morning. A month later there are drip streaks and surfactant-looking brown stains on the walls. What went wrong?

An apprentice is told to cut in and roll a living room. He cuts in all four walls and the ceiling line with a brush first thing in the morning, breaks for lunch, then rolls the walls in the afternoon. The customer complains the edges look darker and hatbanded around every wall. What did he do wrong?

A contractor is applying a two-coat elastomeric coating to a CMU commercial building. Spec says 12-14 mils WFT per coat. His crew sprays it with a 517 tip at about 8 mils wet, doesn't back-roll, and puts the second coat on 90 minutes later because it was dry to touch. It's also going over hairline cracks and the parapet cap has no flashing. What's going to happen?

A crew is spraying oil-based polyurethane on a hardwood floor in an occupied house. Windows are closed to keep dust off, a gas water heater with a standing pilot is in the adjacent utility closet, and one guy is wearing a paper dust mask. What are the hazards here?

A painter is repainting a galvanized metal roof and steel gutters on a barn. He wipes them down with a rag, applies an oil-based rust-inhibiting alkyd primer straight from the can, then an alkyd topcoat. Six months later it's peeling off the galvanized sections in sheets but holding on the rusty steel gutters. Why?

A painter is finishing interior trim in a new house with a waterborne enamel. It's January, the HVAC isn't running yet, the house is 48°F inside, and he's got the doors laid flat on sawhorses in the garage where it dropped to 38°F overnight. The first coat on the doors is chalky, cracked in a fine mud pattern, and wipes off with a damp rag. What went wrong?

A GC hires a painter to coat a new pre-cast concrete parking garage exterior with a high-performance acrylic. The painter pressure-washes and starts coating 5 days after the panels were set. He also coats right over the form-release agent residue because it 'looks clean.' The spec calls for a pull-off adhesion test. What's the inspector going to find and why?