Saturday, March 10, 2007

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

I have mentioned that George has moved out of the bedroom that has been his since infancy. He has moved into the new wing of the house. In preparing his old room to become the guest bedroom/library I have had to paint over the under sea mural that has been there for nine or so years.

As the colours that I used were quite strong, I thought I should use some sort of base coat that was formulated to paint over strong colours before we went on to paint the room some unoffending neutral colour. It hasn't worked very well. The strong primary colours are being masked by this base coat, but the permanent marker outlines are bleeding through. In fact they've bled through two and sometimes three coats of this specially formulated base coat. NUTS!

We now have partially painted walls with these disembodied Cheshire Cat smiles popping through in an odd shade of purple. I'm going to have to get some professional advice as to how I can seal this so it will stop seeping through the paint.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't know if you can get it over there but I have used Kilz paint, it covers everything and it stays covered. BTW I love your blog. Catty (from the wilds of Maine)

Jay said...

Holy cow! You drew that? And you're painting over it? I would have taken down all the drywall and kept it. Then just put up new drywall.

J-Funk said...

This is not going to be helpful at all but I was reminded of when I was little - I used to LOVE to draw on the walls with whatever I could find: marker, crayon, chalk, etc. NOW I understand why my mom got so mad each time she discovered another one of my drawings. Finally she did two things to solve the problem, first, she got me some crayons that you are SUPPOSED to use to draw on tile in the bathroom with, which washes right off, and then she hung up really big sheets of paper in the basement and directed me to those, where the neighbor boy and I drew our own kingdom and then lived in it for an entire summer.

Peggy said...

Anon - I've never seen Kilz paint over here.

Jay - Thanks. We've looked at it for long enough. I've taken photos. It was time for it to go.

j-funk - You must have had a very strong urge to create! Thank God your mom re-directed your creativity instead of squishing it.

Xtreme English said...

Too bad you can't get KILZ over there. Old fashioned aluminum paint used to work pretty well, but then you had to cover up that!

Here's wot you maybe can get in the UK, according to Google:

Johnstones Stain Block Paint
International Paints Stain Block Paint

NWE Paints Ltd Stain & Damp Block Primer

Good luck!

It also maybe makes a difference if you use oil base over acrylic??? I would think there would be less seepage of color.

Peggy said...

Extreme - Thanks. I'll look next time I'm in a place that sells paint.