We have a deck paint problem...

[Jay Ashworth]

Our stage deck is the usual 1/4 masonite, or something very close, and we've settled, over the 8 years I've been here, on Behr Premium Plus Exterior Base 4300, which we paint-over every year or two, depending on how bad it gets bunged up. We usually manage to schedule it so it gets an entire week dark to harden before we even walk on it, and heretofore, that's worked out pretty well for us.

Earlier this year, though, our drama department painted it to look like a beach, for the Zombie musical of the same name... and when we painted over *that*, it's just not been sticking at all well. We roll our D grand out and it leaves tracks; where we park it it leaves a dent in the paint. It's not clear (to us, cause we're not paint people) what the proper solution to this is, and whether it involves a floor-belt sander, and whether we should pay a pro to deal with that before we repaint in black.

I'm sure other people have dealt with this; what did you do, and did it get you back to stable, where you'd been?

We're back into our active season, so whatever we do probably won't happen til Thanksgiving week, or maybe as late as Christmas week...

 

[almorton]

Must admit I've not seen that problem we regularly paint our stage in various designs, whether it's floor boards, parquet, a beach, a marble floor etc using (usually) Rosco paints and glaze, and when we need to go back to black we use Flint's stage black, which is great at covering a multitude of sins and dries flat and hard really quickly (like a couple of hours - paint at lunchtime, perform at 8pm). I'm not sure if you can get Flint's Black in the States, though there must be an equivalent.

 

[jtweigandt]

Just my musings, but it sounds like you're dealing with the shortcomings of the beach layer, like it never cured hard, and maybe never will. So probably whatever you put over the top of it, you're still in the same boat.

Sanding masonite... sounds like a delicate operation with the potential for a fuzzy mess, since the smooth layer is literally paper thin, and the sawdust below will be rough and fuzzy if you penetrate that layer. If you have multiple layers below and were really careful, you might get away with it.

So this may be one of those moments where "if the audience is noticing all the scratches and tracks on the floor, then your show has bigger problems than the floor"

So the pessimst pragmatist in me says freshen as you can, until the deck is ready for replacement. Ouch.

 

[Van]

A. I'm prejudiced because I can't stand Behr Paint; I've had way too many bad experiences with it over the years with it having a very low pigment concentration and getting way less coverage than almost any other paint. That being said you have, apparently had much better luck with it and I'm glad you have something that works for you.

I agree with the above that whatever they used was probably incompatible with your Behr. I looked real quick and noticed that the Behr you are using is specifically designed for use on Vinyl Siding, or at least it is marketed as being a premium choice for that use. Typically that means they've messed with the binders and, most likely added more latex. If I had to guess I'd say that the beach paint they used was either scenic paint and it was wet blended, or it was a higher Acrylic content than Latex; either way, it obviously ain't sticking. I worry about sanding. Typically when you're having a paint issue like this sanding will cause the peeling layer to ball up and clog the sand paper. It also over-heats the paint and cause it to stick back on itself then it grabs the paint underneath and screws-up or bonds to that <which is funny because it didn't bond in the first place which it what you are trying to fix.>
All this is to say: your best option, replace the floor. Cheapest option<if you don't count frustration and labor> is... man, IDK, I want to say rent a square floor sander the random orbit kind and use the lightest grit sand paper you can find. you don't want to start digging through the rest of the layers by using 60 or 40 grit. Even then it's going to suck; higher the grit the faster it heats up and the faster it clogs up. Might want to invest in a couple sanding belt rubbers to try and salvage as much sand-paper as possible as it starts to clog, but my guess is you're going to go through a lot of it. OR, you might try scraping, I'd run a floor scraper over the whole thing find the most peely spots then come back ad do those areas by hand till you've scraped out to an area that is sticking. Oviously this is going to leave you with an uneven finish with lots of obvious peeled spot but at least it'll al be black. Scraping will also be a lot cheaper and time-consuming than sanding IMHO.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

I'm sure you'll all be overjoyed to learn that that base was Behr, too...

Base:

[ Well, and the colors; it's apparently impossible to insert text around photos in the current editor. ]

 

[Jay Ashworth]

All this is to say: your best option, replace the floor. Cheapest option<if you don't count frustration and labor> is... man, IDK, I want to say rent a square floor sander the random orbit kind and use the lightest grit sand paper you can find. you don't want to start digging through the rest of the layers by using 60 or 40 grit. Even then it's going to suck; higher the grit the faster it heats up and the faster it clogs up. Might want to invest in a couple sanding belt rubbers to try and salvage as much sand-paper as possible as it starts to clog, but my guess is you're going to go through a lot of it. OR, you might try scraping, I'd run a floor scraper over the whole thing find the most peely spots then come back ad do those areas by hand till you've scraped out to an area that is sticking. Oviously this is going to leave you with an uneven finish with lots of obvious peeled spot but at least it'll al be black. Scraping will also be a lot cheaper and time-consuming than sanding IMHO.

We already have a freight lift that's going to require replacement rather than repair, up at the top of scale-5, and *that's* not going to happen; since we no longer have a department head with 15 years seniority, I'm pretty sure we're not going to get a scale-4 replacement masonite floor either.

Sadly, I'm going to need an outside contractor to rule on "this was a poor choice of paint, and it's cost you the floor", and I can't have that either.

<sigh>

 

[macsound]

I think I'd agree with a scraper to remove the worst areas, which shouldn't be a sharp blade if you're having paint flake off so easily. Then paint over with a floor paint that's designed to bind to anything. Then paint your black overtop.

I've worked in so many spaces where the quality of the floor was dependent on 1000 different variables, including what show was in the space last, how much rigging was needed, and even if there were tons of dance numbers, set changes, and mid-run strikes. So don't feel too bad that your floor isn't perfect or even if it takes you a year to find a slowly solvable solution.
I think of it like a human body's skin. There's so much surface area and so much not being watched constantly, you have no idea how some injuries happen and some live there for a while until you find a reasonable fix.

 

[sleepy.cj]

Sorry to say that I don't have any additional advice about how to fix the problem, but I can probably guess why you are having the problem in the first place so you can avoid it in the future.

In order to get a beach "sandy" texture, they probably used a sprayer with watered down paint. If they didn't follow that up with a layer of clear sealer, the weakened binder of that spray layer is probably what is de-laminating from the layer underneath it. (I would usually also add some clear sealer to the water-paint mixture to replace some of the binder.)