Calling All Painters and Home Renovation Experienced Personel

Hello fellow RepRappers!

I am a college student who just finished moving into a brand new development of college student housing. In an effort to cover the walls with various posters and pictures, the idea came up to allow friends and visitors to sign a wall in our place. Before doing this and making a HUGE and costly mistake, I would like to hear your input or experiences.

The wall is just a standard sheet rock type interior wall, with standard wall paint (not sure what base).

We would like to allow people to sign the wall using sharpie markers.

One roommate is entirely against it because he claims he has seen this before with other renters and the landlord ended up replacing (and of course charging them) to replace the entire sheetrock which made up the wall. The story behind that was essentially that the sharpie marker would continue to bleed through, and no matter what, the paint just wouldn't cover the markings.

In talking to another guy (who does painting for a living) says that it is possible to cover, as long as you coat the wall with some sort of "stain remover" paint which would be applied on top of the marker, followed by the fresh layers of paint.

The moral of the story is we are okay with having to paint, even if it's 9 coats. We would like to avoid having our security deposits taken, and huge charges occurring.

So, with that being said, what do you think? Any experience, recommendations, or products to recommend would be great!

I appreciate all of the input, thank you in advance for your help!
-Pat

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- "Project Locus" - Mostly all printed parts, Corexy, Bowden Setup, 12x12 heatbed, ~1 cubic foot build volume
- SeeMeCNC Rostock Max V2

... I've once painted the walls with a coating for easy removal of wallpapers.

Another methode for 'shielding' walls or making wallpapers fireproof is spraying them with sodium silicate ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

You can buy "white board paint" that allegedly turns any surface into an erasable white board. Don't know how it will paint over when you move out, though.

Why not just get a big cloth banner/flag (school logo on a blanket?) or maybe a huge mirror and hang that on the wall for people to sign? Put a plastic tarp behind it so the marker doesn't bleed through onto the wall. That way, you can take the banner with you as a memory of all the visitors you had in your crazy college years.....

Some ideas

buy a dry erase board and provide markers. they aren't cheap.

paint the wall with dry erase paint (Home Depot).

Or paint the wall with BullsEye primer or something like Kilz.
then paint it gloss white. Then paint again at the school yearend.
will likely cover most everything.

or just pay the deposit if 9 coats of paint at the end of the year doesn't do the trick.

cover it in butcher paper?

stand up a sheet of thin melamine (4x8) and tag that?

Avoid letting your RA see the wall also. He'll rat you out.
or give him free beer as hush money.

Moving is enough of a hassle without having to paint walls to cover this sort of thing up when it's time to go. Cover the wall with paper if you must have people scrawling graffiti on it.

I don't understand kids- graffiti on walls, tattoos that look like bad graffiti in your skin, piercings that make you look like livestock on a farm...

Stay the hell off my lawn!

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Killz Primer, and no Red Sharpies. Red bleeds through more.

I don't think I'd do it. If I were going to do something like that, I would buy a thin sheet of plexiglass and screw it to the wall. They could write on that. When you move away, you can take it with you.

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the_digital_dentist
I don't understand kids- graffiti on walls, tattoos that look like bad graffiti in your skin, piercings that make you look like livestock on a farm...

Stay the hell off my lawn!

ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!! Oh, and turn that NOISE that you call music DOWN!!!

Seriously though, +2 on white melamine sheet. It's cheap (< $14 per 4 x 8 foot sheet), and easy enough to break up by hand and toss into the dumpster at the end of the year.....

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2015 06:47AM by vreihen.

Hi,

What about a simple large sheet of paper sticked to the wall buy some remount spray glue ?
Cheap and efficient. And you'll move out with a roll of souvenirs.

++JM

Paint it with Chalk Board paint and let them use chalk. Just a note, I'm a flooring contractor and we know that you never use a sharpie to mark a piece of Vinyl flooring because of the bleed through from the back to the vinyl surface. As a joke we wrote "HELP ME" backwards on the back of a buddy's bathroom vinyl right in front of the toilet where your feet would be. About six months later it started to appear. Pretty damm funny. Of course his woman didn't see the humor. I replaced it soon after.

My brother in law was a pro painter and he said the only way to cover over sharpie markers when someone uses them on a wall is to use a spray lacquer (clear) over the sharpie and that will block it from bleeding through.

So yes, it will bleed through paint, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but some day it will. I tried to paint over some sharpie graffiti at work and it looked fine but a few days later you could see it, it looked faded but was still very visible.

Thanks for all of the suggestions! I forgot to include in the original post that we were going for the "we just decided to write on the wall" type of look.... Now a few days later this is what happened:

- During the following weekend, friends began writing on the wall
- The following Tuesday the maintenance happened to do a "check-up" on some appliances in the house
- We got a nasty email from the landlord
- We began the repair process and here's the result

The repair process consisted of attempting to "clean the wall" as much as possible before applying primer to minimize the bleeding through. I can say that the following DO NOT work on sharpies:
- Mr. Clean Magic Erasers
- Isopropyl Alcohol (also can damage paint, so this was only spot tested)
- Soap and Water with scrubbing pads
- Windex (duh)

Once a few magic erasers had been used up, we began painting. The primer used was "Rustoleum FastPrime2", which is a similar product to the "Kilz Primer". This was used on most of the wall including spots without writing on them in an effort to have the final finish be even.



Primer applied



3 coats of the interior latex eggshell paint



Moral of the story is the only way to fix this is using the special primer for a few coats, followed by a few layers of paint. It's now been a few days and there are no signs of bleeding.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2015 01:01AM by redhatman.

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- "Project Locus" - Mostly all printed parts, Corexy, Bowden Setup, 12x12 heatbed, ~1 cubic foot build volume
- SeeMeCNC Rostock Max V2

This sounds really quite cool, but why the RepRap forums in particular...?

Quote
epicepee
This sounds really quite cool, but why the RepRap forums in particular...?

I'm assuming you're asking me why I chose to ask a question about writing on walls with sharpies, to a forum filled with 3D printing enthusiasts of all types?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2015 02:05AM by redhatman.

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- "Project Locus" - Mostly all printed parts, Corexy, Bowden Setup, 12x12 heatbed, ~1 cubic foot build volume
- SeeMeCNC Rostock Max V2

If you want to do this in a really cool way get some UV security markers. Get a UV light and draw all over the wall. You will only see it when you turn on the UV light or if very bright sunlight shines on the wall and even then it's only quite feint.

Why on earth would anyone want their living space to resemble the inside of a men's toilet at a truck stop?

So what you learned was which type of paint covers sharpie ink best? Think again.

The real moral of the story: People who exhibit such poor judgement that they think it's normal to write on walls wherever they go probably make a lot of other mistakes it would be best not to be around. Find a different crowd to associate with.

Acetone dissolves sharpie ink.

If your ball or frisbee lands in my yard you're not getting it back!

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2015 08:17AM by the_digital_dentist.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Quote
the_digital_dentist
Why on earth would anyone want their living space to resemble the inside of a men's toilet at a truck stop?

So what you learned was which type of paint covers sharpie ink best? Think again.

The real moral of the story: People who exhibit such poor judgement that they think it's normal to write on walls wherever they go probably make a lot of other mistakes it would be best not to be around. Find a different crowd to associate with.

Acetone dissolves sharpie ink.

If your ball or frisbee lands in my yard you're not getting it back!

LOL! I laughed so hard at this. Made my day.

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Horsepower determines how fast you hit the wall. Torque determines the size of the hole you make.

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the_digital_dentist
If your ball or frisbee lands in my yard you're not getting it back!

You forgot to tell them to turn that noise they call music down!!!!!

Quote
redhatman

Quote
epicepee
This sounds really quite cool, but why the RepRap forums in particular...?

I'm assuming you're asking me why I chose to ask a question about writing on walls with sharpies, to a forum filled with 3D printing enthusiasts of all types?

...Yeah...? I feel like I'm missing something.