# Primer Sealer Oil or Water Based?



## petey (May 5, 2008)

Hi all, me & my girlfriend just purchased a home last week. I've been cleaning up the walls in the living room because they are pretty bad. I sanded them, spackeled up the bad spots. Few more bad spots to go after that they should be ready to paint. I was going to first paint them with primer sealer but I'm not sure which one to use. My brother told me to use Kilz oil based interior. The walls are currently painted with a creme colored paint.

Which primer sealer would work better oil or water based?


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## slickshift (Aug 25, 2005)

If the walls have latex on them now (and they probably do), and only have light (if any) stains, an acrylic (commonly called latex) primer would be better

The oil-based primer/sealers would be better if there are water stains or perhaps some other issues

For example, if they are smoke/soot stained an alkyd (oil), or even a shellac-based product might be better depending on condition and type of problem

On a side note, though the oil-based Original Kilz is a great sealer, the latex Kilz products make poor primers
So, although I could recommend Original (oil) Kilz for stain blocking, I'd recommend the Zinsser, Ben Moore, or Sherwin Williams, acrylic primers for latex primers
The Zinsser and Sherwin Williams pigmented shellacs (sealers) would be good choices for super tough stains or furnace blow-back soot


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## petey (May 5, 2008)

The previous owner had done some electrical in the living room so they cut out sections of the wall in 5 separate areas about 
6" X 12" to run the new wires. They put new pieces of drywall in place but never put any tape around the edges & just painted over them. I sanded around those areas, mesh taped & spackeled them over looks better than before. One section of the wall 6' X 8' had wallpaper on it. The wallpaper is not coming off that easily. My brother told me that you can use Kilz oil based to seal the wallpaper in place. I was wondering if this is the right thing to do.


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## sirwired (Jun 22, 2007)

What steps are you taking to remove the wallpaper. There are LOTS of things you can try...

The usual method goes like this:
1) Remove peel-off facing, if present.
2) Perforate paper with wallpaper perferator gadget. (Looks like a hockey puck with spikey wheels on the bottom.)
3) Spray with hot DIF.
4) Gently scrape. A DIY may be helped with the wallpaper scraper made by Zinsser, which will hold the blade at a good angle, and keep it from digging into the wall.
5) Repeat 3 and 4 until paper removed.
6) Use another spray of DIF, if necessary, to remove all the glue you can.
7) If damage to the wallboard facing occurred, (surface looks like fuzzy brown paper or is exposed down to the gypsum), topcoat with Zinsser Gardz. (SW also makes a product that does this that I can't remember the name of.)
8) Skim-coat damaged drywall sections.
9) Prime w/ a water-base primer and paint w/ quality topcoat of your choice.

SirWired


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## Pro Color (Apr 17, 2008)

*A top coat?*

Can we have *two* top coats please.....LoL :no:





pRO cOLOR


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## slickshift (Aug 25, 2005)

Kilz oil-based is a stain sealer
It's not really what you want for going over wall covering
Truly the best thing is to remove the covering
The only time it's not, is when you are actually ripping into the "paper" part of the sheetrock, and leaving a really fuzzy surface, or actually exposing the "rock" part
This is usually only if the wallcovering was applied directly to the sheetrock with no primer or sizing, and the adhesive is very old or the wrong kind

In that case, an oil-based primer can be used
It will not _seal the wallcovering in place_ by any stretch of the imagination
It's just that the solvents in the solvent based primer are less likely (than water based primers) to activate the water based wallcovering adhesive releasing it (the now primed wall covering) from the wall
Water based primers have an extremely high chance of failure as the water seeps in an re-actives the adhesive

However, this process leaves you with other potential problems and should only be used as an absolute last resort

sirwired has listed some excellent directions, I'd try them a few times before even considering painting over wall covering


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## petey (May 5, 2008)

sirwired said:


> What steps are you taking to remove the wallpaper. There are LOTS of things you can try...
> 
> The usual method goes like this:
> 1) Remove peel-off facing, if present.
> ...



I tried this works like a charm. I scraped the paper with a Hyde 6-in-1 Painter's Tool sprayed the wall paper with DIF, drank a beer. 
Scraped some paper off, sprayed more DIF, scraped the remainder of the paper off. Exciting stuff. I said to myself that was easy. I spoke too soon. 
I found more painted over wallpaper in one of the bedrooms around the ceiling area.

thanks for all the help everyone


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## chrisn (Dec 23, 2007)

9) Prime w/ a water-base primer and paint w/ quality topcoat of your choice.

If this were my job( removing wallpaper,which I do every week) I would NOT prime with a water based primer. An oil based primer is called for here to lock down any residual paste that is left over and there will be some. You could also use the Gardz or Draw Tite which the can says will do the same thing but I feel safer with oderless coverstain


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