OMG - I am exhausted.... decided to paint Ophelia while on vacation. After reading several posts, I trekked to Sherwin Williams ready to purchase their Bonding Primer, Duration latex paint and then pick-up Krylon spray to do the front endcap. I left SW with a gallon of off-white Duration laytex interior paint and a quart of light blue-ish. And, a gallon of XIM primer. The store manager convinced me this primer would do for both the vinyl clad walls and the ABC plastic endcap.
I washed all the walls with (phosphate-free) TSP and double rinsed. Then I sanded the endcap with 120 and cleaned. This took longer than I expected and I was ready to get the primer on. OMG - the primer was pure hell. It *went off* very fast = gooey mess within about 10 minutes. It was a bit humid and I had all the windows open (as I was warned about the fumes) - but 10 minute working time??? And there was NO WAY to get it smooth on the end cap. I was even using the expensive moe-hair (sp?) smooth rollers. I decided to goop it on and sand afterward. Two days later and I'm still working on the end cap. I thought rolling on the primer would be less time consuming that taping all off for spraying Krylon. Now I wonder
Day two and I'm excited to start getting the Duration semi-gloss paint on the walls (re-address the end caps later). I got the cut-in portion completed. Two coats and worked on the end cap a bit more. Hopefully I'll finish on Day 3! This is really frustrating work. Not at all fun. Dang. But it does look nice and clean - smells fresh - and I am sure that, some day, I'll be really glad for the fresh look.
Laura