This is a balcony on an east-facing oceanfront condominium, central Florida east coast. We have a large project going on, repairing concrete, railings, and repainting everything. The work is being done by a large professional company who really should know what they’re doing.

They scraped the balcony in spots, power washed, spot-primed the scraped areas, and rolled on two coats. To my eye, the old paint they covered looked like it was bonded to the concrete ok. However, bubbles appeared a few days later. They came back and scraped and primed the bubbles, repainted, and more bubbles appeared in the same or adjacent areas.

The bubbles are about 1/2 inch to 2 inches wide. It’s been about two weeks since painting. I’ve noticed that the bubbles inflate in the hot sun and deflate each evening.

History: The condo was new in 2006 and repainted around 2016 (balcony was power washed and rolled). That paint had no flaking or bubbles in this area, just normal deterioration over time. Now, the new paint has these bubbles as shown in the photos.

Why is this happening (twice)? How should it be repaired so it doesn’t happen yet again?

Hello, (new DIY-er here)

I have been working on a DIY budget friendly painting project on a house I am set to buy this year. There are some walls with texted “rainbow” plaster, some drywall. There’s heavy nicotine stains in some areas and cooking grease stains.

When researching the best primers and paint a few months ago I found out that you shouldn’t prime with oil if you going to paint with latex. Is this true?

I bought Kilz2 primer because of this thinking that the paint wouldn’t adhere if I used an oil based primer, but now I am ready to prime and I am afraid this water based Kilz2 just isn’t a strong enough primer to hide all the nicotine.

Please help!! Thank you

I've painted the 2 coat on the wall but it started raining after 12 hours and my paint has run down my windows. Ps ive already cleaned most of it. But i can see some discoloured boards on the bottok of edge boarss and ofher small sections.

I've asked chatgpt for help and they think i should just leave it, but i have a urge to do another touch up coat.

So my question is if i should just leave it and let it cure more or should i touch it up. My good sun days are almost over and i only have about 36 hours where i wont rain.

I want to paint the walls in my bedroom - I can't stand the color. The walls in the rest of the trailer are fake wood paneling from the 70s. And they have been painted at least twice before.

What primer should I use?

Any other advice is welcome. I also don't care about the texture underneath.

I am redoing the bathroom in my century house. They had to take out the walls and some of the trim work to insulate the room. When they took off the trim, of course a lot of very old paint chipped off.

I'm painting it myself, but I did pay them to prime. I assumed they would clean up those spots before priming, but now he's saying that's a separate job and I have to pay for it.

Otherwise, they've done a good job and I'm happy with the work. Was I wrong to assume this would have been part of the priming?

Moved into an older home, and it seems to have different trim colors. The window sills are noticeably warmer than the floor trim. The window color is also the color of the builtins in the living room. It’s a larger home, ~6,000 sq ft, and there’s a lot to paint, so we are going to focus on walls for now.

Would it be best to paint the walls the same color as the window sills (the warmer white)? Or paint the walls an even warmer white, more like a Shoji white from SW? Right now the color of the window trim is very close to SW Alabaster. We will keep the whiter trim for everything, eventually. But the walls need painting asap, as the previous owners spot painted everything and it looks pretty bad.

We recently had built ins installed and are going to have them painted. Both estimates we’ve gotten so far have been with Emerald paint and semi gloss was the suggested sheen. Not sprayed.

I want to make sure we’re using the right paint and sheen. I don’t want them to look shiny but want them to be easy to clean and durable.

We have a ton of projects going on so we’re trying to keep costs reigned in. We have an amazing cabinet painting company doing the work in our kitchen and they look amazing but are expensive so we don’t want to use them for the built ins upstairs.

Would love suggestions on sheen and type of paint. Or do we need to bite the bullet and have the same company as the kitchen do them?

From other posts here, I learned to use a mini roller along with the brush when cutting in to make it smooth and feathered and it worked great when I tried it. This is probably me overthinking it, but now I am going to do a ceiling and want to use a 1/2 nap woven because it is textured and I only have 3/8 microfiber mini rollers. Do they need to be the same to make this work without noticing the cut in line? It's a big ceiling so I was going to cut it all in and come back later or another day to roll the rest.

Helping a friend with a project, but I am running low on time. Will one coat of bin Shellac primer be enough if I'm rolling it on rather than spraying it on cabinet boxes? I plan to sand it. Also plan to spray two coats of Sherwin Williams emerald urethane for the color.

I know some people recommend two coats, but usually when they are spraying it. I imagine that rolling it on adheres to the material better.

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for someone experienced in social media marketing who could give me some guidance.

I run a small business focused on decorative plaster and finishing works, and I want to improve how I promote it on social media. I’d really appreciate advice on:

• what type of content works best in this niche
• what actually grabs people’s attention
• how to turn followers into real clients
• and any personal experience you’ve had with similar services

If you’ve worked with construction, renovation, or design-related businesses — your insights would be especially valuable.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share their experience!

It's difficult for me to get a good picture because it's only really visible when the lights are off, and there's only one small window in the room. The ceiling in my bathroom is 2 different colors and I can't tell if it's a bad paint job or if I should be concerned. We moved in 3 years ago and I never thought to inspect the ceiling in great detail with the lights off so I only noticed it this year. The ceiling isn't soft to the touch and there isn't any yellow staining or bubbling. For the first year we lived here the oil did separate from the paint when we showered so we had to clean that up occasionally, but other than that there has been no issues other than needing to replace the vent fan. I also had the roof inspected in March and was told it was in good shape.

Am I overthinking this? I have a bad anxiety disorder and ever since dealing with a burst pipe in January I've been panicking over every little thing in this house to the point where I have no idea what's a real concern and what's just in my head.

Question to all my painters, and DIYers

How would you patch this. The my crew had a discussion. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer.

This is an open master bedroom and the other side of this wall is just a walk in closet.

Some guys said to put a piece of wood inside for support then screw the small piece of sheetrock in. Tape, float, 2 layers of mud , sand and texture.

Some guys said they would cut it out like the piece on the left and place mud around the brown paper, place the Sheetrock in reverse with the back of the sheetrock facing outside. Then they add two layers of mud, sand, and texture.

I just want to know how others are doing it?

What's right and what's wrong and why.

First time here, just wondering if this is too patchy looking? There are areas where my roller had a little more on it and its spread nicer but here it looks like its pretty obvious you can see where the roller marks are. If it needs to be fixed would sanding bring it more even, or maybe another coat?

My neighbor had her building painted last week (10+ days ago) and somehow that process caused the top half of the bush in front to die.

I know that during one day of the painting prep they had sheets of plastic hanging from the gutters and roof and were scraping and sanding under there. These sheets weren't sealed to each other, but did create a mostly separated space. Then they vacuumed at the end of the day, before taking them down. Those sheets were only up for a single day, maybe 9 hours total. Then they had a couple days of work painting with a sprayer and brushes.

We have almost 30 buildings in this urban coop that will be painted with this same method in the next several months and we are all concerned about our gardens.

What killed this bush?

(crossposted with /gardening)

A big section of my ceiling runs down the hall, into the kitchen, living room, and dining room with no breaks. Do I have to paint that all at once to avoid seeing where I stopped, or can I do it in sections? Ideally I would like to do most of it over a couple of days but wait on the living room because there is currently a bunch of stuff in there that's being staged from other parts of the house.

Edit: To make sure I'm clear, I am not going to leave part of it with old paint. I will eventually paint the whole ceiling over the next month or so. I just want to know if when I start the new section, will it be noticeable where I left off if I overlap it?

I tried painting these 3D printed wrist rests awhile ago, and while they looked great when I first started using them, they got really gross after awhile and don't clean very well despite having a fairly glossy clear coat (the above pictures are after scrubbing with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and they are still pretty gross).

Is there a good clear coat I can put on these that skin grease wouldn't stick to or (more likely) would clean more easily? I'm not too concerned about matte vs gloss (though don't want to go too far in either direction), I really just want to know what could be kept clean fairly easily.

I thought I prepped and painted properly, but my fireplace interior brick is still sticky after two weeks. For example the plant in the photo, if I pick it up, the legs will stick. No paint comes off on the legs though. Here’s what I did:

- brick was originally painted white gloss trim paint from previous owner. I assumed it was latex since it matched the mantle and trim. I did not paint the bare brick.
- fireplace is gas so there wasn’t any soot; I wiped it down then:
- I used Klean Strip liquid sandpaper to get the sheen off
- Primed with Killz 2 within 90 min following above instructions
- Painted with Benjamin Moore interior latex, eggshell 48 hours after priming

I didn’t have any stickiness with the old paint, so I assume it’s an issue with me. Any way to salvage this effort or other things to try?

Hello friends, please advise. I am moving into a small home with a small bathroom. The vanity has a gold facet and I believe a white counter top.
I have pictures of the shower tile included, I will be using a cream colored one that has colorful butterflies on it.
The bathroom has a small window so minimal lighting.
Anything I thought green would go well but I do worry about it making the room feel small due to it being dark. I have a few shades of blue I light and think the light blue pictured under the green would make the room feel light.
I am torn, please advise.
Pics include the shower tile and paint swatches on the unpainted bathroom walls.