Varnish over gloss paint

Jon Boxall

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Oct 22, 2004, 6:06:03 AM10/22/04

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I've got myself in a mess. To set the scene:

I have stencilled a floor with a pattern to look like tiles. To do
this I:

1. Painted the floorboards with white gloss paint.
2. Stencilled over this with black Artists' acrylic.
3. Painted a black boarded around the edge with black gloss.
4. Applied a satin varnish over the top.

I know this sounds a bit odd, but I had my reasons ;-)

The problem is that the varnish has cracked and rubbed off most of the
areas of black gloss, and appears to have started to happen, but to a
much lesser extent on the areas of white gloss. It seems fine over
the arcylic.

I need to apply something over the top to seal the whole lot. The
varnish that has crackled rubs off easy with a soft brush so I am
pretty sure I haven't ruined it all yet - but I really don't know what
I can apply over it to seal the floor.

If this makes sense to anyone, and they have an answer, it would be
much appreciated!

lightbulb

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Oct 22, 2004, 10:12:52 PM10/22/04

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Was your gloss paint oil based? Also, were the products you used spec'd to
be used on floors?

Mike

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Jon Boxall

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Oct 25, 2004, 5:40:43 AM10/25/04

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The gloss paint is oil-based.
I don't think the products were especially to be used on floors. I
had assumed that, so long as I put a decent few coats of hard-wearing
floor varnish on top of them then it wouldn't matter?

"lightbulb" <ligh...@chartermi.net> wrote in message news:<10njffa...@corp.supernews.com>...

lightbulb

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Oct 25, 2004, 9:15:43 AM10/25/04

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The base coat is very important, especially for horizontal surfaces. A few
things could have caused your problem. Maybe your products were not
compatible. Maybe the paint you used wasn't able to stand up to being on
the floor. Maybe your paint hadn't cured enough before you put the acrylic
and varnish on. I always give oil paint a couple weeks before I do anything
goofy like put varnish over it. I'm most surprised that the varnish over
the acrylic is what is holding up. I don't know much about artist's
acrylic, but putting latex paint over oil is usually a recipe for disaster,
esp if it is then painted over again. It may hold up for a while, but in
time it will usually peel. Whenever you do a project that involves mixing
paint, poly, latex, etc. you should talk to the tech guy at the paint store.
That way if it fails you can at least get your products replaced. You
didn't use a waterborne varnish on the floor, did you?

Mike

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Jon Boxall

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Oct 27, 2004, 10:01:56 AM10/27/04

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Oh dear. This isn't looking good. I just checked the varnish and
it's water-based. Judging by the tone of your last reply, I'm
guessing that that's a bad idea? Is there anything I can do to
recover from this situation?

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lightbulb

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Oct 27, 2004, 10:59:03 AM10/27/04

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Check with a local paint store tech, they could probably advise you better
than I. Seems to me you need to get all that waterborne varnish off of your
floor. Stripper would probably ruin all the work you've done. The only
other choice I can think of would be to scrape all the varnish you can and
redo the floor with oil-base polyurethane designed for FLOORS. Minwax satin
works fine. You will probably continue to have problem areas but you can
fix those as they appear and within a few years you should have dealt with
the last of it. I don't have much experience refinishing floors,though I've
repainted many floors and cleared quite a few new hardwood floors. Maybe
there is a floor refinishing company you could hire that could salvage your
gloss and acrylic stencils. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Good luck.

lightbulb

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Oct 27, 2004, 11:06:48 AM10/27/04

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I should add that the waterborne varnish explains why there is peeling over
the oil and not over the acrylic.
Mike

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Jon Boxall

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Oct 28, 2004, 1:32:33 PM10/28/04

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Thanks everso much for your help. Have also spoken to a specialist
varnish manufacturer and they have also suggested I try an oil-base
polyurethane coating after removing the water-based coat. I'm going
to give that a go over the weekend and next week. Fingers crossed :-)
I'll post the results to this group so that any other poor fool that
has made a similar mistake will know what to do!
Jon

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