Painting/decorating and nicotine!!

I may shortly have the job of painting walls and ceilings in a home that was previously occupied by an avid smoker. I intend to use good quality vinyl matt/silk paints and wondered what problems i might encounter in this circumstance?. What may be the best way to wash down the walls before painting? Is there a solution in a bottle from the sheds?. Some of the walls appear to be drylined plasterboard with lining paper on them?,I'm wary of damaging the original plasterboard surface,,

all advice welcome!!

regards

joe

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Reply to
tarquinlinbin
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Sir

I would "de smell" the house before you start, and that means a jolly good clean. If its a house you are buying take a day or two with no furniture in the place. I preasure wash everthing, and suck all the water up with a carpet cleaner when I do this in my place, but then I don't have any modern new fangled materials to worry about, like bricks or plasterboard.

Reply to
Rick Dipper

My mothers sheltered flat was like that, we left lots of nice smelly things around in every room for a week such as airwick etc. And redecorated it all out. That was 2 years ago and the faint smell lingered until about Jan of this year.

Dave

Reply to
Dave Stanton

A normal sugar soap solution will remove the tar ok. Same on the plasterboard - if it's been painted. If it's just unpainted lining paper, dunno.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Its not really the smell I'm concerned about,its painting and still having it show through the new paint..!

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Reply to
tarquinlinbin

Just paint it like its white paint on a black wall, you choose good quality paint, and if need be do 3 coats.

Rick

Reply to
Rick Dipper

I guess it's the tar that causes the staining, so I'd attempt to prepare by treating it like any surface oil or grease, namely wash down with a decent strength sugar soap solution.

Just watch out for your hands with sugar soap - it also does a pretty good job of removing any oils that might be present in your skin, leaving you with hands like coarse sandpaper...

Reply to
RichardS

In message , Rick Dipper writes

IME The staining will still come through - it's not a case of covering up dark colour, the brown staining migrates through the paint layer - it's a quick process, you can almost see it happening before your eyes.

Reply to
chris French

In message , tarquinlinbin writes

Many of the walls and ceilings in this house we very stained as well. For washing down, sugar soap (from any shed /hardware shop) will be as good as anything, even plain warm water removes it. But expect to have to wash down a few (say 3) times, even then you may find some staining comes through.

I reckon the best thing if at all possible is to remove and replace existing coverings if at all possible - in our house we eventually re-plastered most rooms anyway.

You can use a stain blocking paint first before the top coats, and this does the job, but it's a bit more expensive, and rather smelly (as in the solvents) to use.

Reply to
chris French

I don't think you can use water to wash plasterboard with. You can seal it with something though.

It's tar on gloss that really needs washing off anyway. Use magnolia instead of white and the first 2 coats will be enough -or enough to show that you are going to need more.

Reply to
Michael Mcneil

Yes. Sugar soap + water

Sugar soap and not much water maybe.

Anna ~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England |""""| ~ Lime plaster repairs / ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc |____|

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Reply to
Anna Kettle

You can use water. Just don't completely soak it.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Hi,

Some years ago I was given a link to B-I-N by Zinnser.

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I don't work for them.

I've used B-I-N several times.

Expense is relative.

"One man's meat is another man's poison, as the old lady said when she kissed her cow"

It's alcohol based, so gives of a smell; pleasant or unpleasant depends on the smeller (see above).

Besides it's one merry way to paint a room! Woo Hoo!

Francis

Reply to
FrancisJK

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