chrisn

I am not a chemist. I am a paper hanger/painter( 22 years). I cannot tell you the reasons Behr is inferior, it just is. You are an artist, do you buy your paint, brushes, canvases,etc, at Wall mart, Lowes,Home Depot? If so,I am sorry.We have tried to help, take it or leave it.

Lovegasoline

chrisn, don't take my reply the wrong way, I very much appreciate your advice and respect your experience. And I've both enjoyed and learned much from your many posts regarding painting in the forum.

That Behr is almost universally reviled among professionals is well known. I can understand the top coat paint being dismissed...but is it possible for Behr to radically screw up in formulating and producing primer? As long as it seals (I'm using two top coats) and rolls on somewhat manageably, can it be that much of a liability under two solid coats of Ben Moore? Trust me, if it weren't offered free, it wouldn't have been a consideration, I'd of bought BM primer or comparable. But the fact that there's a 5 gallon pail of it provided for free is tempting.

I used it on a hallway here (substrate = skim coated mix of joint compound/plaster of Paris) with a high quality 5/16" Ben Moore Microfiber roller and it laid down nicely...it looks real good. Brush-ability wasn't the best, but I was able to roll real close to all edges after cutting in, so that wasn't a deal breaker. If the Behr has deficiencies in how it handles, which I do not doubt, I think I've managed to overcome that with good quality tools and careful technique.

It looks like a good foundation for the two BM topcoats. But, looks ain't the whole story. If there IS a Behr issue with stability, longevity, compatibility, etc., I'd want to know.

Since I'm not covering any dark colors, it's impossible to say if the Behr is deficient in pigment. I did lay it on solidly so it covered sufficiently. I guess there's the Behr's quality of surface that the BM paint will react to and how the BM Regal Flat/Matte will look, and that's an unknown...to me.

Anyway, thanks for the input. I got another paint/primer question to pick your brains with. I'll post it up in a day or so when I have a moment.



PS: I use mostly top of the line art supplies. Primarily because cheaper stuff is a pain in the ass to work with and/or handles poorly...you have to think about it too much when you should be focusing on other stuff. Or it is so cheap as to jeopardize the permanence and stability of the artwork. The really crap stuff...stuff that is a joke and pale shadow of the real stuff... gets pitched as it just gets in the way...like a pack of 12 pencils I bought in a drug store out of desperation recently...the wood casing was so low quality it was tough like plastic, poorly bonded to the graphite, and near impossible to sharpen with a knife and the graphite would break off unsupported. The graphite was so low grade it had difficulty making it onto the paper...it had the basic ingredients of a pencil, looked like a pencil, but wasn't quite yet a pencil...after I endlessly struggled with it trying to draw, I gave the pack to a homeless man in a coffee shop.
OTOH, a standard reliable mainstream yellow varnished #2 pencil for 10¢ is in many, but not all art applications just as useful as the $1 art store pencil.
Brushes that always shed hair and/or cannot hold their shape are no fun. Paint that's too oily or with too many fillers can present problems (although too oily can still be used, bit it needs some prep attention and blotter paper).
Most all supplies are never used 'neat': they seem to get modified or tweaked in order to perform in a desired manner.

GBR in WA

http://www.diychatroom.com/search.php?searchid=1039838
Be safe, Gary

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If you have a clothes dryer in an interior room, please check the exhaust ducting for lint build-up!

Lovegasoline

Gary, I went through this same sort of search a few weeks back. Came across a lot of complaints about Behr paint, but nothing specifically regarding their primer.

Looking through those posts it's the same all over again....nobody has feedback on the primer.

Lovegasoline

Back to the task at hand: recent experiments on reconstructing the ceiling step.


Gary, due to resolution, it was difficult for me to clearly make out the tools in the image you referenced. Without any prior understanding, your description seemed to go over my head. However, I was able to see the basic mold form they used and I made something similar (btw, the page in general was a great read, one of the best on this sort of plaster work I have come across). Mine was made from plywood well sanded on the business end (the rail thing I missed completely) and touched the room’s structure at two points: it had a slide plate that gets pushed across the top of the wall (the ‘frieze’?), a cutout mold profile which was glued into a dado on the slide plate and the uppermost part of this mold profile touched and slid along the ceiling. With joint compound it worked pretty well…. at first. However, the skim coat of the wall the workers had applied near the ceiling had too much undulation in it (and some Durabond 90…too much PITA to sand) so the slide plate would track too irregularly and just create a very wobbly line, except for some few places. It was then I understood the importance of a track to guide it. You need to have reference surfaces that are true to one another which is lacking in my 80 year old building. My sense is they may have used the picture rail molding as the track in the original construction, as I was thinking of doing…but the building had settled too much and where two walls met, the molding didn’t align. It was slowly turning into brain science. Back to the drawing board…err... the posting board, the DIY forum.

Custombuild, your solution was very intriguing when I first read it (I never knew spray adhesive was actually used to apply corner bead, nor did I know the latter came in plastic). Last night I bought 70’ of corner bead and some spray adhesive. The only problem is the ‘bead’ part of the corner bead will thicken the stepped lip a little more than I want aesthetically (from original 1/4” almost 3/8”) but I’ll get used to it. Also, there’s not much space between the lip and where the cove begins curving away from the ceiling…in order to blend the flat side of the corner bead, I may have to rework the cove’s curve to keep it uniform. I’m now reflecting on your suggestion about using tape to prevent cracks. I only experimented with a couple foot section and I used pre-mix joint compound (no tape)…. not sure if it will crack either on the ceiling side or on the wall side of the corner bead…I may put some tape on the latter (however, tape means some more compound build-up and destruction of the cove’s curve). I may try Quickset mud (Durabond 90) instead of the joint compound for the first sparse coat: it will be harder and maybe avoid cracking better than compound. I’ll do the topcoat 2nd coat in joint compound so I can sand it easily.

I’m under the gun for time, but once I do the layout with a chalk line, and carefully cut 60+ feet of corner bead to the exact width (!), I think it will go rapidly.

My only concern: do you think the spray adhesive and the light coating of Durabond/compound will be enough to hold the corner bead on the ceiling and without cracking down the road? I do not want to tape the ceiling side of the corner bed at the stepped lip.

Thanks again to everyone