My bathroom is in desperate need of some help. Previous paint jobs were not done properly, leaving me with patches on the walls where the paint has cracked in an alligator pattern, sometimes even bubbling out from the wall if it gets humid enough. There is also a hot water pipe running floor to ceiling that looks to have been painted about 500 times, and it has numerous bubbles on its surface.
I wanted to add some color in the bath anyway (the walls are currently white), but I have to do something to prep the walls and pipe so that they look decent when the job is done. Would sanding the alligator patches on the wall be okay/sufficient? And how should I handle paint removal and re-painting for the hot water pipe?
If your paint is bubbling, I would say that’s indicative of a moisture problem in the walls. I don’t think just painting will fix it.
I lived in a house at one point where the walls had been painted with an oil based paint. When we tried to paint over them with a water based paint, the top layer of paint blistered and peeled off the walls.
Get a good bucket of primer for that one. Make sure it is rated for both oil and water and you’re good to go.
My house has such nasty walls that I always use copious amounts of joint compound followed by a thick coat of primer before I lay on the regular paint.
Get the primer tinted the same color as your top coat and you won’t have to use so much top coat.
Painting is the easy part. The prep is tedious, dirty, and not fun. If the paint is pre 1978, it may contain lead, so take appropriate precautions. Unstuck paint has to come off. As Ginger noted, if the wall has issues, fix them first. Scrape, sand, use chemical removers, or whatever to get everything that is unstuck or poorly stuck off the wall. Clean what is left with a solution of TSP to remove surface gloss, bond-breaking dirt, and residual paint-cooties. Repair wall irregularities with drywall compound, and sand smooth. If you can see it or feel it, paint won’t cover it-it will be a painted flaw. Now seal the whole mess with something like BIN 123 or Gardz® prior to topcoating. For a bathroom, strongly consider a paint formulated to retard mildew growth-the slop you buy at a Big Box store isn’t worthy of getting a brush dirty. Buy real paint from a real paint store. 