5 Ways To Know If Your Paint Is Not Good To Use in Arlington, VA
When you have a painting project ahead of you, there is pretty much always going to be one thing that you are going to need to use as should be fairly obvious — the paint!
Of course in an ideal situation, you’re always going to be going into a painting project knowing how much paint you are going to need, and then once you finish, only have just a little bit left so that you can do some touch-ups as necessary.
It can happen, however, that you will find some paint that was set aside and for whatever reason, you did not properly label with any sort of meaningful information about how old it is — as this would be the perfect thing to let you know how old the paint was and thus a good chance of it possibly not being good anymore.
Let’s now look at five ways to know your paint is not good to use in Arlington, VA
1. The Presence Of Mold
The first thing that you should be on the lookout for when you are looking to figure out if your paint is good or not is the presence of mold.
The simple answer is that if you see mold in the paint can, you can be pretty sure that something has gone really wrong with the paint and you’re not going to want to use it.
If you see mold and you are thinking that you can just scrape it off and be fine, don’t do it — the presence of the mold is just a sign that the paint has gone bad.
2. The Smell Of Ammonia
The smell of ammonia, on the other hand, is a sign that you have good paint that you should be able to use, notwithstanding the possible presence of mold (which again is a bad sign)
There are many smells that you are not going to want to detect when you open and mix a can of paint but the ammonia one is a good one and a positive one as it were.
3. Pudding Appearance
As you open up a can of paint, even if it has been a while since the paint has been opened, once you stir the paint there is a certain appearance that the paint should take on.
That appearance should not be like a thick pudding like the kind that one might find in a school cafeteria setting — that would be a bad sign.
4. It Has Been Frozen And Thawed Repeatedly
In the course of storing your paint while you aren’t using it, it’s important that you keep the paint in an area where the temperature is relatively steady — not too cold and of course not too hot.
If you discover that the paint that you have been storing is in an area where the temperature fluctuates sufficiently that the paint will have frozen and thawed over a period of time, you are looking at the possibility that your paint will have gone bad.
This is because the nature of freezing and thawing the paint ruins the paint for future use.
5. Does The Liquid And Paint Mix Smoothly
Lastly, you have to have a good look at how the paint and the liquid that is often found on top of the paint when you first open it up after not having used it in a while mix together.
If, for example, you find that there are no issues with mixing the paint and the liquid together and it mixes quite smoothly, you are looking at paint that is more than likely okay.
If, on the other hand, the mixing does not go well and the resulting paint looks chunky or otherwise unpleasant, you can pretty much guarantee that the paint is not going to be good to use and will have to be taken to a place to recycle it.
Image Painting is a professional full-service residential & commercial painting contractor based in Falls Church, Virginia. We have served the Washington DC metropolitan area since 2003. You can click below to request an estimate.
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