Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Using Acrylic Paints for Household Repairs?

Acrylic Paint

Acrylic paint has no smell, is quick drying and the adhesive qualities make it really handy for minor household repairs.


Wallpaper

A few weeks ago I was wiping a mirror and the cord holding it up snapped. The mirror slid down the wall removing the texture of the wallpaper on its way. I was upset that I didn't catch it first, but that is life. :-)

After a quick check I knew that I didn't have enough wallpaper to redo the whole wall.

I thought about it for a couple of days and decided that I'd use some acrylic paint and texture paste to see if I could repair the worst of the damage.

I hoped to paint on some texture to blend in the areas were the textured pattern had been scraped away.

I started with a mix of texture paste and acrylic paint to fill in the deepest parts and once that was dry I applied a few coats of straight paint to fine tune some of the areas.

I wish I could say that the whole thing is wonderful, but that would be a lie. However it does hide most of the problem and I can live with it for now.


Wood

I did use acrylic paint before to blend in some wood grain on a fireplace that was chipped. If you decide to try repairing or disguising the filler on wood it is a good idea to consider whether the wood will change colour with age and adjust your wood graining to take that into account.

I was painting some wood grain onto a pine area. Pine and redwood darken quite a bit with age so I needed to make it quite a bit darker. I found the easiest way was to add a knot to the area and it worked very well.

There is often no need to buy touch up paints when you can use your acrylics.