Driven Mad By Stenciling

[Trav]

Hi folks,

I have just regsitered to this site in the hope that someone can help me. I recently moved into a house where the previous occupier was stencil mad. I painted all walls with 3 coats but at certain light angles I can still see the stencil writing showing through. I am reluctant to buy more paint as I think that there may be simple solution that I am missing. The walls are plasterboard and I think the stencils were done with somesort of oil based paint but I am not sure.. I was using an ordinary emulsion for the walls. Do I have to use an undercoat first or something else

Look forward to any help.....cheers.

[BigWallop]

Aaaahhhhh!!!!! Stencilling!!!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!!! :-)

The only sure way of covering it is to hang lining paper. An oil based paint is quite difficult to cover up, especially if the new colour is a lot lighter. So, I Think, the only sure way is to cover it with lining paper first. Hanging paper is an easy job, and especially so with lining paper.

[Set Square]

Wallpaper?

[Rob]

Hi,

I bought a house that had dark blue stenciling on light pink walls. Repainted it with a sort of light china blue colour. It seemed to hide it away until after some temperature cycles from winter to summer and the new paint cracked all along the outline of the stencil that was underneath.

The solution was Dulux professional primer/sealer. Not sure if it is called that anymore. It definately wasn't waterbased.

[Bob Smith (UK)]

I had a door where some numbskull (called Colin) had painted his name, then painted the door. He must have let it dry in between, because you could see it clear as day.

When I came to painting it, I sanded it down first (just fine grade), not to bare wood, just to remove the raised "numbskull" section. Painted over it, and you can't see a thing now. This would stop the cracking mentioned in another post too.

Bob

[bigcat]

One solution would have been to paint a solid border over the stenciling using the same paint as the stencil. You could probably still do it, though youd need several more coats over that. Otherwise use one of the paints designed for this, see screwfix.com.

NT

[Rick]

In my experience, you need to sandpaper the stensils.

When my daughter was younger, we had new plaster, so we painted it, I let her paint her name. I assumed wallpapering over the extra thick paint she used would cover it up, but alas, I can still see her name as a raised arae in the wallpaper. Since then I have sandpapered them out.

Rick