The smell of paint

[Martin Wiseman]

Hi,

I fear I may have committed a minor faux pas and I'm looking for a sanity check on my methods of dealing with it.

I put the last coat of gloss paint on the guest room on Thursday evening in anticipation of it being used on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, two days later and with two days left to go, the room still stinks of gloss paint.

My thinking is that heat is more important that ventilation in getting the solvents out of the paint so I have the window only cracked open very slightly and have a fan heater running which is heating the room to

30 degC.

Is this the right approach? Is it actually making a difference or am I just wasting money running the fan heater? Is there anything else I could do to speed the process?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Martin.

[cerberus]

As daft is it might sound...a couple of cut onions will absorb the pong.

Don.

[Anne Jackson]

The message from "cerberus" contains these words:

I was about to suggest that. My mother's cure for paint smells...

[Styx]

Agreed. Cut them in half and leave lying around the room (on saucers, perhaps) and they seem to genuinely help to remove the smell.

Styx

[Frank Erskine]

I'd rather put up with the paint smell. On!ons are awful.

[Keith]

The solvent needs to escape so open the windows and let all the air in the room out. The paint will dry at low temperatures, I mean if you do some painting in the cold you can still smell it right?

K

[Merryterry]

Put a bucket of Horse Shit in there. It wont cure the smell but it will divert their attention!

[Anne Jackson]

The message from Frank Erskine contains these words:

I'm allergic to paint smells, though. The fumes make me ill.

[Stephen Howard]

Try a scented candle....some of the 'seasonal' ones are pretty niffy and will go some way to disguising the paint smell. A naked flame helps anyway.

Regards,

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well both are what you need. You need to have a low vapour peressure - the less solvent is in the air, and the hotter it is, the lower that will be.

So heat it to hell, then open the windows wide and totally replace the air every hour or four....