Painting new plaster

Yazmina

I had my ceiling skimmed last year and now I'm ready to paint it. I started using ordinary white emulsion (just a small amount, cutting in and around the light fitting) and have found out that this is likely to flake off. I've now got 10L of Leyland contract matt, can I just paint the contract matt over the emulsion?

Thanks.

macman

I'd thin it 10% for the first coat. 10 litres? That must be a large ceiling!

Yazmina

Thanks. It's all the ceilings on the ground floor.

How do I tell when the paint is 10% thinned?

Ganga

Add 1 litre to your existing 10 litres.

Yazmina

The whole thing. I see. Thanks.

steppevos

No not the whole thing! Only so much as you think you need for the first coat. Start with 2 liters of paint and add 200ml of water or similar.

Yazmina

steppevos wrote: »

No not the whole thing! Only so much as you think you need for the first coat. Start with 2 liters of paint and add 200ml of water or similar.

You might be right. Coverage is apparently 13sqm per litre. My ground floor is around 40sqm I only need 3 litres. Also is contract matt meant to be just the base coat? Should I then apply 1-2 coats of regular emulsion?

traineepensioner

Yazmina wrote: »

You might be right. Coverage is apparently 13sqm per litre. My ground floor is around 40sqm I only need 3 litres. Also is contract matt meant to be just the base coat? Should I then apply 1-2 coats of regular emulsion?

Dilute for the 1st coat with 10% (ish) water and use the rest undiluted.
You'll probably need 2 coats of undiluted after the first diluted (mist) coat. Matt is OK for ceilings as it's quite forgiving and doesn't show up all the imperfections in the plaster.

moonpenny

I have just done this.
Bought 10 lt of cheapest matt from wickes, poured half ( 5 lt) into a bucket and added 1 lt of water (thought i should dilute it by 20%)

Went on a bit transparent looking although I thought the paint was still reasonably thick But has dried really white.

d0nkeyk0ng

I hate the fact that contract matt comes only in 10l buckets. I had to do a 1m by 1m patch of ceiling that was recently plastered. I used a clean yoghurt pot to dump the paint into a paint scuttle and then guestimated 10% water and mixed thoroughly. Went on beautifully. Second and third coats were neat.