Farrow & Ball clogs sandpaper shock!

Submitted by colin on Wed, 10/19/2011 - 22:50

I'm Currently painting a kitchen designed by Howard Wilson Robinson in a large house nr Frome in Somerset. The client has chosen a Farrow & Ball Estate Eggshell colour - "Dove Tale" - for all the cabinets, and I have to say, while the colour is nice enough, Farrow & Ball is definately not my paint du jour at the moment. The job is a big building site, and like most British building sites, is unheated and slightly humid (though not exactly damp). It says here on the tin "recoatable in 4 hours, dry in 24".

33 hours later I'm still getting clogged sandpaper when rubbing down before the next coat; even when I switched to using the excellent Abranet Handy sander. In the old days, the kitchen furniture was installed ready primed and required three coats of eggshell to give a good hard finish. The new 2010 VOC laws have banished that sort of simplicity forever. We now have to contend with hybrid paints like these which are not up to the job yet

Comments

Submitted by Andy Crichton on Thu, 10/20/2011 - 08:20.

Good points well made. Just heard of another kitchen painting specialist down south (Colour Republic) who had the same issues where the eggshell stays tacky and doesn't dry. Thinks that F&B have tinkered with the formula. The F&B hybrid seems to be the worst of both worlds, unlike Superdec which you and the forum guys rave about. Just adds to my thesis that F&B is not a trade paint.

Submitted by colin on Thu, 10/20/2011 - 22:39.

I've been forced to use Farrow & Ball for the rest of the job, and I'm having a bit of a rethink. To cut a long story short, I phoned F&B technical, and they said my problems were (predictably) my own fault. Was I putting it on too thick? Did I use their undercoat? Well, er....no. I've always just gone three eggshell over the primer. So I've used undercoat this time, and I have to admit it's gone a bit better. I can't say if working with the undercoat is the definitive answer because I'm working in a different area and only a controlled experiment would tell. But I am getting a half decent finish and am feeling a bit better about the product. Especially when you're on a busy site, with the labourers vacuum blowing out almost as much dust as it sucks, the short time until the paint is touch dry is a definite bonus. If I had been working in oil I would be tearing my hair out.
Speaking of oils, of course the modern versions aren't exactly behaving themselves either, and if I had been using acrylics then the cold and damp would have caused problems there also, so it's horses-for-courses.
The main problem is that F&B is such a strong brand, its the first colour-chart customers reach for. Once they've chosen a colour, it's difficult to persuade them to change to a different paint with a possibly slightly different colour.