Firstly, brilliant forum loads of advice, pleased to have found it. 8)
(I'm afraid I'm going to be one of those people who asks more questions than gives advice, :oops: )
I live in a concrete prefab high-rise and I have never been able to paint the walls that successfully. The walls are basically large concrete slabs, as far as I'm aware there is no plaster on them. In some rooms I have wallpapered and painted over that which works ok, except that I'm pretty lousy at hanging wallpaper.
I'm working on one room at the moment that was never papered, in places the existing paint hasn't taken to the walls at all in many places and is bubbling and flaking off.
I just wanted some pointers as to the best preparation really, do I treat the bare concrete bits in the same way as plaster? I've seen quite a lot of advice on painting plaster, but none on concrete. I'm not after a perfect finish, but I do want the paint to stick.
What I'm doing so far is scraping off the loose paint, then sanding the edges where it's come away. I'm going to give the walls a wash with sugar soap after that, and then an emulsion mist coat. am I doing it right or is concrete not suitable for painting on with emulsion?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Doug.
==edit==
Well after having scraped, sanded and washed I've found that loads more of the old paint is bubbling up and I'm scraping that off. I bought a tin of dulux rich matt white emulsion and I painted the whole wall with a 1:1 dilution, it seems to have taken fairly well, although while I was painting it on, more of the old paint bubbled away which I scraped off as best as I could and painted over. I guess I'll probably need to sand again before the next coat, at least in the places where I had to scrape paint away. I'm then going to do a more dense mist coat, and then a final coat of neat paint. I'll report back on how well it works.
