PAINTS AND STAINS
Nearly every kind of surface, from drywall to concrete, needs protection from the elements. These dangerous elements can range from raging blizzards to innocent looking sunlight on a bed room wall. The full total thickness of the paint that eventually ends up outside of your house is usually about one tenth the thickness of your skin, and interior paint is even thinner. We ask a lot of that coating of skin. What it can do is determined by a number of factors, including the quality and brand of paint or stain, and exactly how well the walls are prepared and painted.
Paint and stain should be durable, resisting fading and abrasion and allowing repeated washings. Interior paint can go on with minimal spattering. An excellent interior stain or clear coat should resist fading, peeling, or yellowing, and also be easy to keep up, free from impurities or waxes which could collect dirt and grime and make cleaning or recoating difficult. Exterior paints should dry with a toughness that resists deterioration from all sorts of exposure, and an elasticity which provides for constantly expanding and contracting areas. With their deep penetration and level of resistance to ultraviolet (UV) light, the stains and finishes on your home's external surfaces should give a similar high performance.
The Evolution of Stain and Paint
The oldest known paint was utilized by the painters of Lascaux, who ground natural pigments with water and a binder that may have been honey, starch, or gum. You may be wondering why these cave paintings have lasted a large number of years as the paint on the south side of your property is peeling after only three winters. Here's why: The continuous mild temperature, humidity, and dark interiors of caves are ideal preservatives. Your house, on the other hand, is exposed to all types of weather and conditions.
The Egyptians knew as early as 1000 B.C. that paint could protect as well as decorate. Beeswax, vegetable oils, and gum arabic were heated and mixed with Earth and seed dyes to paint images that have lasted thousands of years. The Egyptians used asphalt and pitch to protect their paintings. The Romans later used white lead pigment, making a formula that would exist almost unchanged until 1950.
The Chinese used oil from the Tung tree to cement the Great Wall, and to preserve wood. The Chinese used gums and resins to make advanced varnishes such as, shellac, turpentine, copal, and mastic. The formulas and applications for those varnishes also evolved little over the centuries.
Milk paint dates back to Egyptian times, was widely used up until the late 1800’s when oil-based paints were introduced. Odorless and non-toxic, milk paint today has been revived as an alternative interior paint. Cassein, the protein in milk, dries very flat and hard, and can be tinted with other pigments. Like stains, milk paint should be coated with a wax or varnish, and is also very durable.
Created from hogs' bristles, badger and goat hair, brushes also evolved little for many centuries. Bristles were hand bound, rosined, and greased, then hand laced in to the stock of the brush. Hog's hair brushes, called China bristle brushes, remain a preferred brush for oil-based paints.
Pigments originally came from whatever bore a color, from ground up Egyptian mummies to road dirt and grime. Most mineral or inorganic pigments came from rust, potassium, sea salt, sulphur, alum (aluminum), and gypsum, amongst others. Some extravagant projects incorporated precious stones such as lapis lazuli. Hundreds of organic pigments from plants, insects, and animals made up the rest of the painter's palette.
Paints and stains changed little from the time of the Pharaohs to the Industrial Revolution. A book on varnishes released in 1773 was reprinted 14 times until 1900, with only minimal revisions. However, the colder climates of northern Europe did bring about the need for more durable paint, and in the 1500s the Dutch artist Jan van Eyck developed oil-based paint.
Starting around the Middle Ages lead, arsenic, mercury, and various acids were used as binders and color enhancers. These and other metals made the mixing and painting process dangerous. Paints and varnishes were usually blended on site, where a ground pigment was mixed with lead, oil, and solvents over sustained high heating. The maladies that arose from harmful exposure were common among painters at least before late 1800s, when paint companies commenced to batch ready mixed coatings. While contact with poisons given off through the mixing process subsided, exposure to the harmful ingredients inherent in paints and stains didn't change much until the 1960s, when companies ceased making lead based paints.
World War I forced the U.S. painting industry to modernize. Manufacturers had to discover a replacement for the natural pigments and dyes that came from Germany. They started out to synthesize dyes. Today many pigments and dyes are chemically synthesized.
Innovations in the painting industry have extended well beyond pigments. Water-based latexes have gained in level of popularity as a safe, quality alternative to oil-based paints. Latexes have transformed from simple "whitewashes" to highly advanced coatings that can outlast oil-based products. Both oil-based and latex coatings are emerging each year with notable improvements, such as the ground metal or glass that's now added to reflect destroying UV light.
A milestone in the evolution of coatings occurred in the very early 1990s with the introduction of a fresh category of paints and stains known as "water borne." Created by the need to comply with stricter regulations, water borne coatings reduce the volatile organic ingredients, or VOCs, within standard paint and stains. Dangerous and flammable, VOCs evaporate as a coating's solvent dries. They could be inhaled or assimilated through your skin, and create ozone pollution when subjected to sunlight.
THE MAKE UP OF STAINS AND PAINTS Paints and stains contain four basic types of ingredients: solvents, binders, pigments, and additives.
Paint and Stain Solvents and Binders
Solvents will be the vehicle or medium, for the materials in a paint or stain. They determine how fast a covering dries and exactly how it hardens. Water and alcohol are the main solvents in latex. Oil-based solvents range between mineral spirits (thinner) to alcohols and xylene, to napthas. The solvent also contains binders, which form the "skin" when the paint dries. Binders give paint adhesion and strength. The expense of paint depends in large part upon the grade of its binder.
Because water is the vehicle in latex paint, it dries quickly, enabling recoating the same day. The odor that you notice when by using a latex paint or stain is the "flashing," or evaporation, of the binder and solvents. The binders in latex are minute, suspended beads of acrylic or vinyl acrylic that "weld" as the paint dries. Latex enamels contain a increased amount of acrylic resins for higher hardness and durability.
Alkyds and oil-based paints are simply the same thing. The word alkyd is derived from "alcid," a combo of alcohol and acid that acts as the drying agent. Both have the same binders, which might include linseed, soy, or Tung oils. Oil based and alkyd enamels may contain polyurethanes and epoxies for extra hardness. Alkyd paints come in powerful combinations such as two part polyester-epoxy for professional use and a urethane altered alkyd for home use. Urethane boosts sturdiness.
Water borne coatings use a two part drying system: water is the drying agent, and oils form a hard-drying resin. These new coatings match and sometimes out perform their oil-based cousins. They resist yellowing, are more durable, require only water clean-up, have little odor, and are non-flammable. One disadvantage: They raise wood grain and require sanding between coats.
Stain and Paint Pigments
Pigments will be the costliest element in paint. In addition to providing color, pigments also impact paint's hiding power - its potential to cover an identical color with as few coats as is possible. Titanium dioxide is the principal and most expensive ingredient in pigment. Top quality paints not only have more titanium dioxide, but also more finely ground pigment. Inexpensive paints use coarsely ground pigment, which doesn't bind well and washes off more easily.
Stain and Paint Additives
Additives regulate how well a paint contacts, or wets, the surface area. They also help paint flow, level, dry, and resist mildew. Oil is the surfactant, or wetting agent, in oil-based paint. These paints have a natural thickness and capacity to flow and level; they go on smoother than latex and dry more slowly, so brush marks have a chance to level out. That's why oil-based paints tend to run on vertical walls more than latexes do.
Latex paint has been playing catch up with oil-based paint over the years. Today many latexes outperform oil-based paints and primers, because of thickeners, wetting agents (soapy substances that are also called surfactants), drying inhibitors, defoamers, fungicides, and coalescents. Defoamers keep latex paint from bubbling and leaving pinpricks (called "pin holing") in the paint as it dries. Bubbling is caused when the soap wetting agent rises to the surface as it dries. The better the paint, the less pin holing you should have. It used to be that if latex paint was shaken at the paint store you would have to let it to settle for a few hours. That is definitely no longer the case with better paints, that can be opened and used right out of the shaker without threat of pin holing.
Coalescents help latex resins bond, especially in colder weather. Oil-based paint, since it dries slowly and resists freezing, can adhere and dry in temps from 50°F to 120°F. With added coalescents and, believe it or not, antifreeze, some latexes can be employed in the same heat range, and even lower. Some exterior latexes can be properly applied at heat at only 35°F. Companies including Pratt & Lambert, Pittsburgh Paint, and Sherwin Williams have removed the surfactants to help their latex paints be applied in lower temperatures. As the wetting agents have been removed, the latex dries faster.
UV blocking additives have been put into paints and stains to help slow deterioration. Sunlight is responsible for a lot of the breakdown of any covering. It fades colors, dries paint, and increases the expansion and contraction process that makes paint crack and peel off. UV blockers in paint may consist of finely ground metals and ground glass which is currently being added for even more reflection of natural sunlight.
If you reside in an area with lots of humidity, rainfall, and insects, you may want to consider adding a biocide or fungicide to your paint. Biocide deters insects, and fungicide counters mildew. Many coatings already contain some fungicide, but only in small concentrations because of strict interstate regulations.
Sound Quality Painting
824 90th Dr SE suite B
Lake Stevens WA 98258
(425) 512-7400
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