Flaking Paint PLEASE HELP

[misterbobzi]

Please help if pos, We have had our bedroom skimmed ready for painting, so we bought some cheap B&Q white matt emulsion and watered it down to "wishy washy" the new plaster as we have done in the past...anyway we put a coat of matt emulsion paint and the corners started to flake...so we applied another coat but of different shade and better quality which appeared to be fine. But when we applied masking tape to the paint so we could paint the coving, when we lifted the masking tape it lifted all the layers of paint which left us with bare plaster again!!

now we have walls covered in paint but round the top and on corners the plaster is showing...PLEASE can you tell me how to salvgae the situation and what we have done wrong.

THANKS IN ADVANCE

 

[Zampa]

Look for low tack/pressure sensitive masking tape

I dont think its down to your painting...masking, especially if is been left on a while will rip the paint off....

Try wetting the remaining stuff.

 

[Nestor_Kelebay]

Misterbobzi:

Does the paint still pull off if you use a painter's masking tape? If not, then I agree the problem may have more to do with the tape you're using rather than the paint.

However, if the paint still pulls off with painter's masking tape, or doesn't seem to be adhering as well as it should, I think much of the problem arose when you watered down the "cheap B&Q white matt emulsion".

Where I live in North America, lesser quality paints will use vinyl acrylic binders that simply don't adhere as well to most substrates as "100% acrylic" binders. Watering down a lesser quality paint is only going to exacerbate the problem.

Go to:
http://www.paintquality.com
click on the grey "Solve Your Paint Problems" link
click on "Interior" and click on the down arrow in the "Interior Topics" drop down menu, and click on "Cracking/Flaking".
Note that under Possible Causes it lists both use of a lower quality paint which has poor adhesion to begin with, and also overthinning any paint. In your case, you started with a lower quality paint and overthinned it to "wishy washy" the plaster skim coat.

Also of importance: You say you had the bedroom "skimmed" ready for painting. Do you know if they just put on a gypsum based joint compound for the skim coat, or did they put on a real lime based plaster coat?

 

[misterbobzi]

thanks for the replies fellas, i will let you know