Who in the world would ever paint plastic? The paint chips off and almost melts if it gets wet. Who needs another thing to feel bad about? On the other hand, if you are someone who delights in all the colors of our corner of the visible world this might be your ticket. Lawn furniture, electric switch plates, indestructible little corner tables-these all come in basically three colors, blah, blah and blah. As a committed soldier in the war on beige I ask, what are you going to do about that? Here’s what you do. Regular house paint has a hard time sticking to many plastics. What you need is primer, specifically, a bonding primer. They stick to just about anything. I am convinced that they would bond to bad memories: roll four or five coats of black paint over that and voila. All gone. X.I.M. makes a good bonding primer that is easy to find in paint and some hardware stores. Clean whatever it is you want to paint then give it a light sanding with 150 grit sandpaper. The sanding thing might be old painter habits but it won’t hurt. Brush on a coat of primer and by the next day it ought to be on there like white on a lima bean.
Caution: If by the next day you can scrape the primer off with your fingernail something is wrong. There might have been oil or wax or who knows what on the plastic. Nothing sticks to wax except more wax.
Once primed, every hue forged in the big bang is yours to play with. The primer will stick to the plastic and the paint will stick to the primer. A turquoise patio table with ethereal aqua chairs: Be bold. If only love were so simple.
Have fun painting. Email any questions to JoeAdami@JoeAdami.com |
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Paint brushes aren’t designed to be deadly weapons but that is all they are good for if you don’t clean them. If I loan out a brush it almost invariably comes back to me stiff as a blackjack. Latex paint can be harder to clean than oil based paint because it dries so much faster. Good brushes are expensive so here’s what you do to make them last.
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I handed a fan deck to a client of mine who was ready to begin considering colors for her home. She lookled at me like I was offering her an angry tarantula. "What am I supposed to do with that," she asked in horror? Fan decks can be terrifying. Every color in the world is in there-or so you might think. The fact is that the many hundreds or colors in a typical deck represent less than the dusting of snow that falls on the tip of an iceberg.
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Nothing scares people like a garage full of old paint. They imagine their house festering into a kind of Love Canal. A good friend of mine left a can of lime green primer on her stoop the other night knowing that I was going to stop by. “You know what to do with this don’t you,” she asked? Some people hate recycling and are fine about pouring their mess into the ground-or down a sewer-for the earth to soak up. “It’s only water based,” one guy told me. So is hemlock tea and look what happened to Socrates. As an old buddy who liked crossword puzzles once told me , “Don’t defecate where you habitate.” I agree. Here’s what you do with old paint.
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HANG YOUR HEART ON YOUR WALLS |
I have been noticing how many people do not display art work in their homes. Unless you live in a spare, minimalist white box, bare walls leave the impression that the occupants have never really settled in.
It’s true that the decision of what, where and how to hang can be intimidating. However, you do not have to own an original Picasso to qualify for space on a wall. A framed reproduction or poster can be just as impressive. Whatever you hang on your wall should bring you pleasure. It doesn't matter if it is worth a million dollars or 50 cents. If it makes you feel good, then it is good.
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