We used old paint and now the room smells really bad!! Help!

jay_dee

We have used some old paint to decorate my daughter's bedroom. We put the first coat on yesterday. It smells really bad, like cat urine, and the smell is not going?? It didn't smell like this when we opened the tin, and we have used old paint before and never had this problem. My question is, will the smell eventually go? If we paint over with new paint, will that help? Do we have to seal the wall first??

Thanks in advance!

choille

Slice up an onion & leave it in a saucer in the room - it will fade.

keystone

jay_dee wrote: »

We have used some old paint to decorate my daughter's bedroom. We put the first coat on yesterday. It smells really bad, like cat urine, and the smell is not going?? It didn't smell like this when we opened the tin, and we have used old paint before and never had this problem. My question is, will the smell eventually go? If we paint over with new paint, will that help? Do we have to seal the wall first??

Thanks in advance!

Crown Matt emulsion about 2 - 3 years old? Big problems with this stuff stinking - even when new. Crown couldn't solve it IIRC and i remember it being discussed that the problem was bacteriological rather than chemical. Eventually the solution appeared to be to paint over it with an akaline primer then repaint with Dulux.

HTH

Cheers

Edit: BTW just going over it again with more emulsion won't help - the reaction will continue and it will still stink. You need to do the primer coat first.

keystone

choille wrote: »

Slice up an onion & leave it in a saucer in the room - it will fade.

Lovely old wives tale which I never believed until I tried it and by golly it works a dream when applying gloss paint.

Unfortunately it won't help this problem if it is what I think it is though as per post above.

Cheers

jay_dee

Thanks choille and keystone for your advice - much appreciated!

(And yes, keystone, it was Crown paint!)

andrew-b

Maybe someone at crown was taking the p*** (literally!)

keystone

andrew-b wrote: »

Maybe someone at crown was taking the p*** (literally!)

It wasn't that funny actually, Lots of upset people and they actually didn't sem to know what to do about it!

Cheers