does anyone have any experience with making new painted woodwork look as though it has many coats of paint, without actually giving it 100 coats of paint? i'm thinking a short-cut, like maybe add some kind of thickener to the primer?
Permalink Reply by Phil on November 5, 2009 at 6:12pm
Maybe we should trade houses! When I paint my woodwork, I spend hours sanding with an uncomfortable HEPA mask on so that my woodwork looks like it doesn't have lots of coats of paint!
yeah, that's a bummer. but i bet you're uncovering some nice work. my house had absolutely no built-ins, so i don't have to deal with that: however, i have to construct the "built-ins" myself. but since my house is old, i don't want the construction to look too new. my house was built in '49 and i guess they were building them pretty bare bones in that era. thanks for responding!
I don't know what the secret is but the previous owner of my house must have gotten a degree. Some of the woodwork looks like paint was applied with a putty knife.
Make sure you knock off the sharp the edges of the new woodwork with sandpaper before painting. Those sharp edges are a dead give away for new work. 2 coats of high quality primer then two coats of high quality paint. Use a paint conditioner and a really good brush (no sponge brushes or rollers). I just built bookcases for a sunroom and nobody has been able to tell that they aren't original.
Benjamin Moore or Coronado Oil base primer with Penetrol mixed in to mitigate brush marks. I know oil is a big pain but it gives a better base. You can use latex/acrylic paint over the oil primer if you want. I up-loaded a photo of the new bookshelves. Not the greatest detail in the pic but you get the idea.
I did that once for a job to match my new woodwork to some old existing woodwork. I coated the new wood work with Abatron epoxy "wood epox" thinned with "liquid wood" q.v. That added a build that filled the sharp details and stuff and I globbed it here and there, then I primed and painted. It worked out OK. At the time I used oil primer and latex top coat but now I switched to zinzer water based primer for interior work. So far so good. Time will tell how the new water based primers hold up. Hopefully the big boys in the primer manufacturing R & D facilities are doing their homework...
And yeah, like Lynne said, I also knock down sharp edges with a block plane or sandpaper, I'll use a cabinet scraper on flat surfaces to give it "wear and tear" too, maybe a little"ding" here and there with a blunt object...