Can vinyl covered masonite (bathroom wall) be painted?
Question:Bathroom has a vinyl covered wallboard (masonite) that needs
replaced. Is it possible to successfully paint over the vinyl?
If so, what sort of primer should be used?
Answers:
This material can be painted, but it will be a lot of work to do it properly.
The covering is not vinyl. It is a glaze made from several chemicals including silicone and teflon. Those are two of the hardest things to get paint to stick to.
You will need to sand until all of the gloss is gone. Every bit of the paneling, including the indented lines if you have them. You should not sand away the entire coating, just take away the gloss. I would go with a 100 or 120 grit paper. Anything heavier will leave marks in your finished paint, lighter will take much longer to get done. I would consider a vibrating sander for this, not a belt sander. If you use a sander, do make sure you go back and get the indented parts.
If there are any spots where the coating is gone, prime with an oil based primer, thinned just a bit to where it is rather runny. Exterior oil primer will be fine if you can't find interior. Do not prime areas that still have the coating with this. The oil primer will need to dry several days before moving on.
Cover the entire area, including any areas you primed with the oil primer, with a pigmented shellac. BIN is probably the best, other stain block products will work as long as they are shellac based. Dry overnight.
Topcoat with a good latex of your choosing. That will be the easy part.
lightly scuff with a greenpad and paint with Kilz(I think thats how u spell it) its a primer that will cover and seal most anything
scuff it good with 60 grit paper. sherwin williams. pro block primer tinted to 50% of your color. paint with super paint.
It can be done by sanding and all of that, but it would probably be easier to just replace the masonite with new unfinished masonite. It's not expensive.
Either way, white shellac is the best primer to use. It covers virtually anything and seals it, so it won't bleed through the paint. It's got some really strong vapors though, so you want to ventilate the area well when using it. You can paint over white shellac with any kind of paint on the market.
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