| Almost everyone has painted at least a room in Iris home-and fin- ished the job a bit dissatisfied, convinced there must be ways to make the work go faster and easier while simultaneously producinga better result. There are such ways. Every trade has its tricks, andpainting is no exception. If you know them, you will be able to saveyourself time and effort and do the job right, t A painter s craft is not merely a matter of procedures and tech-niques. It begins with an understanding of what point is and how itworks. The coating that you put on your house ceates a tough filmthat 1) bonds itself to either a fresh, new surface or an old, unevenone; 2) covers and helps to protect that surface against the assaultsof weather, airborne chemicals and dirt; and 3) remains flexibleenough to stay intact for years while the walls settle, vibrate, and ex-pand and contract with changes in temperature. The coating that ac-complishes all of this is only about five thousandths of an inch thick-just a little thicker than a page of this book. Almost any liquid that dries into such a coat for a surface can beconsidered a paint and an astonishing variety of materials have goneinto these mixtures. In India, boiled rice was used to bind paint together; milk and lime have been principal ingredients in popularcoatings; and there are some modern paints that consist essentiallyof colored cement or dissolved rubber. But/most Of the paints incommon use contain certain types of ingredients, each with a spe-cific function. Substances called pigments, made from minuteparticles of earth, metals or chemical compounds, give paint its col-or (varnishes, being colorless, are unpigmented paint). The ability toform a thin, tough film comes Irom ingredients called resins, oftenknown as binders. These resins were originally the natural secretionsof certain plants and insects, but now consist mostly of rnan-madechemicals plastics-such as alkyds, acrylics, polyvinyls or urethanes.Chemical agents called plasticizers keep the paint elastic after itdries. And to make the mixture of pigment, resin and plasticizer thinenough to be used with a brush or roller, it is combined with a sol-vent that may be water, a mineral spirit such as benzine or a plant de-rivative such as turpentine. No one paint is right for every surface-and no paint of any kindwill work well if you use the wrong tools to prepare the surface orapply the paint. The chart on pages 8 and 9 matches both interiorand exterior paints to almost any surface that you are likely to encounter; on pages 18-19 and 54-55 you will find pictures anddescriptions of all the tools you will need for any painting job. Theremainder of this chapter deals with the specific problems and thetechniques of interior painting. |
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