Paint varnished wood work

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Moderator Post (s) for this thread: > Cracking paint by thiggy on 08/20/2008 > Cracking by thiggy on 08/20/2008 > No by Billhart on 08/20/2008

The problem is that the stained finish is coated with a lacquer or varnish. It is slick and other coats won't stick to it. It might also have some wax or "polish" on it.

It needs to be sanded to give some"tooth" for the top coats to stick to.

My standard is to use a Liquid Sandpaper that changes the surface so that another coast will stick. It also cleans it.

The use an latex PrepRite BONDING primer from Shwerwin Williams. XIN also makes a bonding primer.

Bonding priners are very "sticky" to help then hold on difficult surfaces.

That can be top coated with either oil or latex paint.

On one job the home owner already had started using BIN as the primer and a latex finish coat.

BIN is a shellac based primer. It is also very sticky and is a universal barrier that can be used between almost any find of finishes.

You may need to experiment with what is the best way to fix this.

Sand down all of the cracked areas. If the finish appears real loose then get a scrapper.

You might need to use coarser sandpaper, but want to finish sanding with 180 or so.

You might want to strip it. You don't need to get down to bare wood.

And if you used latex for the paint and primer then you might try using denatured alcholo to "wash" it off.