A good alternative to wallpaper or a standard faux finish for a bedroom, commercial store or building is a wall graphic. Wall graphics can be essentially any design or pattern that “works” for the room, in the color palette of choice for the room.
Masking Tape Removal - Not Always Possible While the Paint Is Wet.
Removing masking tape while the paint is still wet is the safest way to remove masking tape in terms of getting clean removal. If you are painting a graphic or complicated stripes that require multiple coats or colors, you will not always be able to remove the masking tape while the paint is still wet.
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This is a description of a graphic job which did not allow for wet paint tape removal because of the multiple coats required to achieve good paint coverage.
Day Two: Sand, Priming, First Color
The spot repairs were vacuum sanded to eliminate sanding dust. The spot repairs were then spot primed with a quick drying oil based primer (Zinsser Coverstain). An oil primer was used because it would penetrate deeper into the drywall compound and form a stronger bond that would resist the stress of the tape pull off after the graphic was applied over it.
Once the spot primer was dry, a quick drying primer was used (BIN) to seal the whole wall to provide for uniform “hold-out” and prevent an uneven paint appearance, once painted. This coat of primer would tie the finish coat to the previous paint and allow the new paint some tooth to grip to.
Once this coat of primer was dry, the walls were painted with a light green, latex satin sheen paint (Sherwin Williams Superpaint) on the upper portion and a gray violet on the lower portion. The finish paint was allowed to dry overnight.
A coat of quick drying Coverstain primer, tinted gray, was used for this. Once the primer was dry, two coats of the deep tone purple-red was applied. The paint was allowed to dry overnight.
Day Four: Tape Removal
With three coats of paint (one primer and two finish) on the tape, there was some anxiety that the tape would pull off and tear the freshly applied paint with the tape removal on this day.
Tape pull off can pull a latex paint off with the tape and kind of rip the paint edge. The reason for this is the fact that latex paints cure very slowly and they don't develop full adhesion until they are cured. Oil based paints are less problematic.
Rather than just ripping the tape back and hoping for the best, the tape was slowly removed at right angles to the surface. Pulling the tape “up” from the surface tends to create problems with paint ripping off with the tape. Pulling the tape “away” from the edge rather - at right angles is almost always safer.
The result on this happy day was that the tape pulled off leaving clean lines with no tearing of the previous paint applied the day before.
Conclusion:
You can get clean tape removal after drying (overnight) if you are painting over a primer like BIN or Coverstain.
Note: When you can, you should always remove the masking tape while the paint is still wet - before it skins over. This is usually possible on one coat paint jobs.
Keys to Success
- Good penetration and seal of drywall repairs. Drywall compounds in particular, can be weak and unable to pass a tape test (and therefore, tape pull off). In order to strengthen the compound and seal it, an oil based primer was used. Oil based primers have the ability to penetrate into a surface better than other primers, forming strong adhesion. This adhesion develops quicker than it does with a latex primer or paint.
- A good bonding tie coat to the previous paint. To achieve a quick strong bond to the old paint (in this case a latex satin -semi gloss), BIN pigmented shellac primer was used. BIN adheres strongly to most paints very quickly, and a latex paint applied over top of it will develop strong adhesion fairly quickly (at least overnight in the case of a pastel color latex).
- Note: if the previous paint was a latex flat, a tie coat primer may not be needed at all. Also note, that a chemical deglosser could have been used on a previous latex satin or semi gloss to provide for good, quick intercoat adhesion instead of the bonding primer (BIN) tie coat.
- Pull tape off at right angles - don’t pull tape up off surface
Related Articles: Painter's Tapes
The steps used to prepare the surface, mask and paint are described below, which resulted in clean lines and no problems even though the tape was left on the wall overnight.
Day One: Surface Prep.
The surface required minor spackling of nail holes, nicks and dents in the walls that were to receive the graphic.
Quick drying chemical setting compound was used (one, two or three coats as required) allowing for the compound to set up adequately between coats. The compound was then allowed to dry overnight.
Painter's Masking Tape
3M, Frog Tape, Easy Mask
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Day Three: Mask, Prime, Deep Tone Paint
The graphic was laid out on the walls using 3M’s #2080 blue tape, a tape measure and a pencil. The 2080 tape was burnished down with a piece of cardboard to tightly smooth it down to the surface. Any pencil marks used for marking measurements, were allowed to show so that the painted graphic would cover them (rather than hide them under the blue tape - only to have them revealed when the tape was pulled off).
Since the graphic used a deep tone purple-red (see Painting With Deep Tone Paints), these areas were first primed with a gray primer to aid in paint coverage.
Wall Graphics
Masking and Clean Tape Removal
Description of a Graphics Job
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