My wife had the brilliant idea of painting a bookshelf from Ikea with latex paint. She now discovered that the paint could easily be scratched off. Is there anything that we can do to help keep the paint on? Would a coat of polyurethane help?
Shouldn’t scratch off (easily) after it has a chance to cure. You don’t have to coat the paint with anything.
What caused the scratching off? A bookshelf should not be exposed to much violence.
Did you paint bare wood or was it already finished? If finished you need to sand it with fine sandpaper first to rough the surface or the paint won’t stick.
Paint takes a while to cure. The can should give instructions. Once I painted a baseboard with semi-gloss and a few days later had carpet installed. The underside of the carpet flapping against the baseboard as the carpet was installed scratched it off horribly. Wouldn’t have happened if there had been 4-6 weeks of curing time.
The veneer of the KD Ikea furniture should’ve been deglossed or primed first, preferably both. Regardless of curing (which is a valid point, btw), the latex paint had nothing to stick to in the first place.
To further clarify, coating over the latex with anything else won’t fix the basic problem of the latex not having a suitible surface to adhere to in the first place. It might even weaken the existing coat, making it easier to peel off.
If you have the time, strip the latex off, and start over. This time deglossing the suface and using a suitible primer. Kind of overkill, though, if you ask me.
For a quick fix, just touch up what gets scratched and be careful around it.
I’ll assail this with an educated guess.
The furniture from Ikea might be coated with a two part polyurethane or a conversion varnish. Both of those finishes are designed to resist infiltration from contaminants, i.e. coffee, juice, food particles, waterbourne whatever.
If you’re attempting to paint this finish with latex paint, the finish will resist it, just like you’d want it to do if it was a coffee spill on a dining surface. The finish (I’m still guessing here) is smooth, and the paint is just skating right off, like it would on ice.
Scratch the surface to provide some mechanical adhesion for the paint. Sand the finish to scuff it up.
Any poorly bonded finish will need to be removed. I don’t know what factory finish is supplied on IKEA furniture, but the suggestion of satin poly is not unreasonable.
If the latex finish removes easily enough, do so with a rented or borrowed random orbital sander, and possibly a detail sander for corners.
FWIW, there are products which combine priming, stain sealing, and bond coating, and will stick to glossy surfaces. Some are latex based, others are oil/alkyd based, and some are alcohol/shellac based. I use products made by Zinsser Company because of one reason: their stuff consistently works well.
Zinsser products are available in some home centers and most better quality paint stores. Their home page is: http://www.zinsser.com/
The only good news is you may be able to remove the latex paint fairly easily just with water & a scrubby sponge like you might use on a kitchen pot with fried-on crud. DON’T use steelwool unless you’re ready to rough up the factory finish intending to paint again. I can often get spilled or even painted latex off of furniture with no abrasives and no harsh chemicals.
It works better when the paint is young, say no more than 4 weeks old. It does get tougher with age.
Thanks for the help guys. It looks like the paint will have to be removed and the bookshelf sanded and repainted. The bookshelf is not new (we’ve had it for a couple of years) and had some ware and tare to it. My wife wanted to give it some new life by repainting it to mach the color of my son’s room. Well, it at first you don’t succeed,…
BTW, the thing is made of particleboard with a thin layer of faux finish wood. I don’t know what the finish is made out of, but it has a grain to it that makes it look and feel like wood.
It could be a veneer of real wood with a finish on it or it could be a plastic veneer. Most likely the first, I would think.
Either way, deglossing it (either by fine sandpaper or chemical deglosser) will help your second try to work out better. Just in case it is a plastic veneer, go with the sandpaper to degloss it.
I like using sanding sponges. They fit around and inside curves nicely. The thin, soft 4" square sponges. Not the stiff 2½X3½" sponges. But, that’s just my preference, ymmv on that. Use a fine grit (180 or 220) and lightly go over every square inch. You don’t want to wreak it, just scuff up the finish.
I would still reccommend a primer. Some people may not think you need one, but I think you’ll get a longer lasting end result if you do. The Zinser products previously mentioned by dances are outstanding.