Home Technology Choosing The Right Paint and Ink

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Choosing The Right Paint and Ink

These days there are a lot of people doing their own home improvement projects. Because times are tough, it just makes more sense and saves money doing it yourself than hiring someone to do it for you. This can mean anything from touching up the paint on a fence to painting a whole room of your house. You want to choose the right paint and ink for your home, one that is safe, and is going to last a long time. Here are a few tips to help you.

One of the most important tips that a professional will tell you is that primer is the key to making sure paint stays on the wall, and covers up underlying paint. What primer does is cover any previous paint, your kids drawing on the walls, as well as stains and odors. It also helps your new paint stick to the wall better. The problem is that there are a lot of stains and odors that may bleed through normal primers. Before you buy a primer to cover these problems, you may want to buy a stain and odor blocking primer such as Kilz, an oil based primer that’s not only a primer, but a sealer.

Choosing the right paint and primer is also important. There are usually two types, either oil based, or water based. Each has its’ pros and cons. Oil based coatings tend to be more expensive, smell more, and have to be removed with paint thinner. While this may mean more work for you, there are advantages to using oil based products. Oil based products cover previous paints and other stains better, especially water based undercoatings and stains. Stains that oil based products cover well are things like nicotine, rust and water, just to name a few.

Water based coatings smell less, and are much easier to clean up. Usually they are cheaper overall than oil based paints and primers. They are good at covering up stains that are solvent based, like scuff marks, inks, and crayon, to name a few. If you have children, it is a good idea to buy products that have no volatile organic compounds. Both types of primers are usually available in white, so if it is used under a darker paint, you should buy some tinting color that is close to the color of your top coat paint.

Buying the right ink is important as well. Oil or solvent based inks are a good idea. While they are harder to clean up, the advantage is that they last much longer than water based inks. Let’s face it, there are going to be times when the paper you wrote on may get wet. Water based inks are going to bleed, while solvent based inks won’t, so you will still be able to see what you wrote. In addition, in colder weather an oil based ink will work much better than a water based ink which may freeze up in low temperatures.

Coatings raw materials have come a long way. It used to be that these coatings were made with lead, but now they are produced with non toxic chemicals and additives. 3M is one of the biggest manufacturers of coatings, raw materials, and ink products. They are constantly trying to improve their products and make them safer for the consumer. You can find out more here; http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Energy-Advanced/Materials/Our-Industries/Paints-and-Coatings/.

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