Hey friends,Looking for some input here. I am a white boi but I live in Taiwan with my wife and kid. We have a house and have been renovating it slowly. The walls are in need of some TLC. About a year ago I started painting one of the empty bedrooms and quickly became pretty overwhelmed when I realized that the walls are fucked. When I say fucked what I mean is that there are three old layers of water based paint with the most recent layer going up about two years ago before the sale. That layer was really poorly applied and flakes off even by looking at it wrong. There are also some spots that have flaked down to raw concrete because of water intrusion and efflorescence however this is minimal. I just do not know how to go about fixing this and getting a fairly consistent wall surface. Locals suggest grinding down the walls with an angle grinder paint grinding attachment but this seems like a fucking nightmare. I hired some guys to grind my porch which is about 25 sq. ft. and it took them close to ten hours working in a team. I have tried doing spot treatments on flaky areas but wet paint on these walls will invariably lead to flaking on the third layer, making a nice finish impossible. I considered just spraying rather than using a roller but I have observed the drying paint on non-flaking areas create new flaking, which makes spraying a losing strategy. I have also considered just putting some very thin plywood over the original wall but doing this on the entire house is going to be a major pain in the ass and it would look like shit long-term. I guess the truth is that all of the options kind of suck. What would you do in this situation? Is there a better way to remove the three old layers from concrete?
Taiwan, I remember the mold. I live in the desert now.You got the classic landlord special paint job, concrete needs to be sealed with paint made for it or a vapor barrier before you put anything on it. I have no idea what they'd call it over there.Unfortunately, manual removal of the shitty paint is your only option if you want to repaint. If you want to slap paneling over it, a vapor barrier is needed.
scrap/grind everything that is loose and repaint...what else are you gonna do..is it moisture ? is the concrete falling apart?
There's no half measures here, you need to strip the old shitty paint with paint stripper, paint scraper, a low grit orbital sander (or just sand paper if you want to give your arm a very good workout), nuke the walls with bleach, put on a thick layer of anti-mold primer, and then put at least 2 coats of interior paint via roller. You're going to want painter's tape, and a lot of paper or magazines to catch all the crap on the floor. The paint particles and stripper will be very smelly and slightly toxic so you'll want at least a 3m mask and some decent ventilation. If you live in an area with high humidity you should make that a factor for your primer and paint, especially if there's a lot of salt in the air. Honestly it shouldn't be too expensive but it is very work intensive, so expect this to take the entire weekend. Watch youtube videos on this.
Yep you're gonna have to take everything out of that room , buy yourself a p99 dust mask a face shield and an angle grinder and a couple of wire wheels , do yourself a favour and get yourself some single use tyvek coveralls too, and buzz the fuck out of the wall until you get everything loose off. Then you will need to clean everything up with a shop vac and then wet mop the floor . Hopefully it's not lead paint, might want to test it. Asian construction standards are dog shit. It's gonna suck but I think this is the only option here.Then you can apply proper concrete sealer primer and paint
Maybe scrape, clean, then elastomeric paint.
