| wewcmw |
| (enthusiast) |
| 10/15/07 10:45 AM |
painting southern yellow pine furniture
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I have an old "This Ends Up" dining room piece that is made of southern yellow pine.
I would like to paint this piece a white color.
Any ideas how to prep (sand?) and what to use to seal/prime the piece prior to top coat(s)?
| Dennis_H_N.J. |
| (Sandwichless in N.J.) |
| 10/15/07 12:54 PM |
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Re: painting southern yellow pine furniture
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I dont know what "this end up" is... But if it's stained and finished furniture, I would sand the finish just enough to remove the gloss. Then prime with a shelac base prime such as Zinzer.. Then paint the final color... Our paint expert, Nestor may add a bit to this!! He knows paint!!
| Bob_Fleming |
| (Carpal Tunnel) |
| 10/15/07 04:42 PM |
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Re: painting southern yellow pine furniture
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I usually use oil primer like Cover Stain on something like this. I just don't like to work with the shellac primers. Very messy cleanup!
| Nestor_Kelebay |
| (Specializing in Non-Fiction) |
| 10/15/07 09:51 PM |
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Re: painting southern yellow pine furniture
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You should understand the following:
1. The purpose of a primer is to stick to the substrate and provide an easy-to-stick-to surface for the top coat to stick to. Normally, you only prime BARE materials, like bare wood, bare metal, bare drywall or bare plaster. The purpose of sanding down a paint or varnish prior to repainting or revarnishing is to provide "tooth" so that the next coat of paint or varnish sticks well. So, unless you sand right THROUGH the paint or varnish on your furniture to reveal the bare wood, you normally would not need to prime. The sanded paint or varnish is rough enough to ensure that the new coat of paint will stick well to it. Priming would normally be a waste of time in your situation.
2. However... with paints, the higher the gloss level of the paint you choose (and everything else being equal), the less well it will hide an underlying color. That's because the higher the gloss of the paint, the smaller the volume percent of the paint is occupied by pigments, and the larger the volume percentage occupied by clear or transluscent plastic binder. So, if your project is dark brown now, and you wanted to paint it with a high gloss white paint, it might take 3, 4 or even 5 coats to completely hide the underlying brown. However, white primers necessarily contain a lot more pigment (and coarser pigment) so they can to dry to a matte gloss, they'll hide an underlying colour much better than a high gloss paint will. So by putting on a coat of primer first, you get a better head start and might only need one or maybe two coats of high gloss white paint over the primer. The same thing is also true if you wanted to paint your project with a coloured paint. If you want to paint with a high gloss red paint, then tint your primer with red pigment to get a head start on the colour change as well.
So, combining 1 and 2, you generally only prime bare surfaces and sand painted or varnished surfaces, but it makes sense to prime over sanded paint or varnish if you want to change the colour.
3. If you use a primer, use an interior OIL BASED primer. If it were me, I would use an interior oil based paint over that primer as well. Oil based paints dry to much harder films which stand up better on working surfaces like table tops and shelving than latex paints. Latex paints simply aren't hard enough for a working surface, and dirt gets embedded in them making them look very dirty very quickly. It's never a good idea to use an oil based paint over a latex primer on a working surface because the latex primer is too soft to support the oil based paint well. As a result, you're likely to find the oil based paint cracks and chips easily because the primer under it is too soft.
4. To reduce brush strokes, thin your paint (and primer). Water based primers and paints can be thinned with water or a product from the Flood Company called "Floetrol". Oil based paints can be thinned with mineral spirits (also called "paint thinner") or a product from the Flood Company called "Penetrol". In both cases, if you're painting a horizontal surface like a window sill or table top, then water or mineral spirits is all you need since thinning will both reduce the viscosity of the paint and lengthen the drying time, thereby allowing brush strokes to self-level flat before the paint dries. However, if you intend to paint any vertical surfaces, then you have to be a lot more careful when thinning with water or mineral spirits because the combination of lower viscosity and longer drying times on a vertical surface results in the paint "sagging" as it dries resulting in a horrid looking paint job. In those cases you need to use Floetrol or Penetrol. Both are considerably more viscous than water or mineral spirits, so they don't reduce the viscosity of the paint nearly as much, thereby preventing the paint from sagging on vertical surfaces. Both of these will extend the drying time of the paint to allow brush strokes to self level out, tho.
MOST do-it-yourselfers are under the delusion that to eliminate brush strokes, you need to buy a better brush. The truth is that thinning your paint is far more effective at allowing brush strokes to self level than even buying the world's best brush. Also, put your paint on, spread it quickly and then LEAVE IT ALONE. Gravity and the laws of physics will make your paint film level out to a far smoother film than you can with a brush. Too many people keep brushing over drying paint, and the result is that by the time they finish playing with it, so much water and mineral spirits have evaporated from the paint that it is too viscous to self level on it's own anymore. So, the people that strive for perfection by working the paint with their brush are working harder to produce a poorer paint job.
| wewcmw |
| (enthusiast) |
| 10/16/07 10:37 AM |
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Re: painting southern yellow pine furniture
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Thanks for the technical repsonse. Love the details.
This Ends Up is a furniture line in NC that uses southern yellow pine with a clear varnish applied (I believe).
Sounds like I should sand this down first, then go for oil based primer (I like Kilz Oil based myself), then go for the topcoat in an oil based enamel.
Any preference between semi-gloss or satin. Don't want it too shiny, so I am thinking more on line of satin oil based topcoat as the finish.
| Wouldheart10 |
| (Oldie) |
| 10/16/07 10:41 AM |
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Re: painting southern yellow pine furniture
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Nestor knows paint alright and he loves to share his knowledge with anyone asking for advice. Sometimes I wish he would just say Yes or No
Just kidding you, Winnipeg
Geez, you prairie dogs say whatever you want to us!
| Bob_Fleming |
| (Carpal Tunnel) |
| 10/16/07 12:06 PM |
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Re: painting southern yellow pine furniture
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In general, semigloss is a more durable sheen, and this would be important for furniture. Realize that the sheen will dull a bit as it cures, so the new semigloss could be stark, but in a couple weeks would be tolerable.
| Nestor_Kelebay |
| (Specializing in Non-Fiction) |
| 10/16/07 10:51 PM |
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Re: painting southern yellow pine furniture
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Quote:
(I like Kilz Oil based myself),
I wouldn't use KILZ oil based primer sealer on this project.
Basically, if you look at the MSDS sheet for KILZ Sealer it's an ordinary alkyd primer, but it uses a mixture of 60% naptha (camping fuel) and 40% mineral spirits as the thinner instead of all mineral spirits like a normal interior or exterior alkyd primer. So, the reason why it "dries" so fast is because the naptha in it evaporates much more rapidly than mineral spirits.
Remember, the goal here is to get a good looking paint job, and that means not seeing brush strokes all over it. KILZ, with it's very fast solvent evaporation is going to become viscous much more rapidly than an ordinary primer would, and that's a situation that's conducive to your leaving brush strokes in the primer that will show through on the paint.
I'd go with an interior alkyd primer from Benjamin Moore or Pratt & Lambert. And, consider thinning it with mineral spirits or Penetrol depending on whether or not you're going to be priming vertical surfaces or turning the piece as each face dries so that you're only painting horizontal surfaces.
Quote:
Any preference between semi-gloss or satin.
Basically, the higher the gloss, the easier it will be to clean the paint with simple wiping, but the less well it will hide an underlying colour.
If you're relatively new at this, then I'd gravitate towards lower gloss than higher gloss. The reason why is that your eye notices aberations in the way light reflects off a surface, and the brain interprets these aberations to be due to imperfections in the surface. Less glossy paints scatter light, so imperfections in the paint's surface are much less noticable than on a high gloss paint. This is why new houses will often have textured ceilings; so that the owners won't see defects in the drywalling; they'll be camoflaged by the texture.
Quote:
then go for the topcoat in an oil based enamel.
Many years ago, there was a difference between "enamel" and "paint". The very first enamels were almost certainly produced by tinting a can of varnish to the desired colour. Years ago, "oil based paints" were made by dissolving natural plant resins called "copals" (like amber, for example) into linseed oil. The real varnishes of the time were made the same way, only varnishes had more of those copals in them, and the copals were higher quality because they were lighter in colour and more transparent. Also, back then, varnish only came in two glosses, semigloss and gloss, whereas paint came in all the glosses from flat to high gloss.
So, if you were to tint a can of varnish in a paint tinting machine, you got a "paint" that dried to a smoother and harder film than you'd otherwise expect (cuz of the higher copal content in the varnish and the fact that the least glossy that paint could be was semigloss). Those tinted varnishes were called "enamel" paints, and so that word "enamel" came to mean a paint that would dry to a harder smoother film than you'd otherwise expect from a paint. Nowadays, polyurethane has replaced varnish as the clear coat of choice, so the most correct meaning for the word "enamel" nowadays would be a polyurethane based floor paint. However, the word "enamel" still retains it's original meaning so paint companies have chosen to use that meaning as a marketing tool by slapping that word on every can of paint they make, save perhaps for their dead flat latexes. Truth is, because of improvements in paint binders and rheology modifiers, EVERY paint nowdays dries to a harder and smoother film than the same paint did 20 years ago. So, every can of paint can arguably be called an "enamel". So, for example, Behr sells what they call a velvet "enamel" latex paint. That, is the equivalent of calling a city transit bus a "high performance racing vehicle".
So, nowadays, if you see the word "enamel" on a can of paint, you can be sure that what's in the can is still ordinary paint. The word "enamel" on the can of paint makes as much difference as the racing stripe does on a car.
| wewcmw |
| (enthusiast) |
| 10/17/07 10:16 AM |
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Re: painting southern yellow pine furniture
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Nestor (and company) I thank you for a second time. Good reading, and I will take the recommendation on the alkyd primer. I have a Benjamin Moore store close by.