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.