How to stop bleed through primer when painting furniture?

[dchur]

Hey team,

We picked up a small coffee table from someone and have stripped it back to mostly bare wood from the black, red, grey paints that were on it (it's very old!).

Unsure what the wood is but it's relatively light and looks brownish/red. Our plan is to put a mat black paint on the legs and a poly stain on the top.

Today we put an oil based primer on one panel and immediately saw some pink come through which we all know what that means!

Unsure where to go from here with the rest of the legs/beams. My concern is that even though we are going to be using a black paint so the colour of the bleed through won't matter, my concern is that the mattness of the paint will be removed by any bleed through.

Do we do a second primer coat? Use a shellac? Throw it in the bin and buy something? 

thanks team.

Raw wood sanded back up to 240 grit on the topportion of the primer on the beam where you can see the pinkthe primer

[Dave-1]

Good afternoon @dchur 

I have had a bleed through on my door (Only lightly) This was a door that I had removed pretty much all the paint from, Its the first undercoat and I will be doing a second coat before the final coat. I fully expect the bleed through to go after the second coat. That said for your table top. It does look like all the paint has been removed. Maybe try whatever coating you were thinking of before any more leg paint to see if you are happy with it? I actually like it when you can see the "History" of a piece of recovered furniture. Maybe go over the sanding again with a fine grit sandpaper and then wet the timber with water to see if anything shows up?

Dave

[EricL]

Hi @dchur 

Thanks for sharing your question about stopping the bleed through your primer coating. When you have this particular symptom, and the stain keeps bleeding though the primer you'll need to use a primer that has a stain blocking feature. 

A good example is the Zinsser 1L Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Undercoat Primer Sealer Stain Blocker. It has mould and mildew resistant properties, seals stains, graffiti and tannin bleed. It's a water-based, low odour primer-sealer and will work on both interior and exterior applications.

I suggest sanding off the the primer you've just put on and using the Zinsser instead.

Please keep us updated with your progress, we look forward to seeing your table primed and ready for the topcoat.

If you need further assistance, please let us know.

Eric

[dchur]

Thanks Eric,

Hilariously, the primer we did use is supposed to be 'stain blocker' however it is oil based and I would prefer a water based one because the matt paint we're using is water based.

Can't hurt to give the one you suggested a try?

It doesn't look like there's a LOT of bleed through, so would a second coat mask most of this?

[EricL]

Hi @dchur 

The older furniture styles sometimes used shellac as their main coating and when the hard dried surface is sanded away, the old coating sometimes bleed through. It's difficult to tell if a second coat of the primer will do any good as it has already punched through the first coat. I would advise to just sand it away and begin again. But I'll leave decision up to you.

Eric

[dchur]

Thanks Eric.

We tried a second primer coat but it didn't work so we decided to give the shellac based primer a go ("Zinsser 470ml B-I-N Primer Sealer Stain Killer shellac based") and it worked a treat. Even one coat didn't show any bleeding, but we did two just in case!

[MitchellMc]

That's terrific to hear @dchur! Keep us updated on your project; we can't wait to see your results.

Mitchell

[dchur]

Thanks for all the help guys.

This is the finished product. We ended up using the shellac primer with two coats. It was immediately clear after the first coat that it was much better than the other one we used and didn't have any bleed through, but we did two just to be sure. We did two coats of poly on the top after standing back to 240.

Quick question. Thinking of doing a third coat of poly, there's a bit of incosistency under certain lighting with brush marks, is that worth doing even if I have to leave it until tomorrow or just leave it alone?

[MitchellMc]

Stunning @dchur! Well done, indeed.

You can apply another coat if you wish, but it might be worth lightly sanding beforehand with 240-grit to remove any brush marks. If brush strokes have been an issue, you could change to a fine nap roller for the final coat. Be sure to select a roller per the product's application directions.

Many thanks for sharing your results.

Mitchell

[Dave-1]

Morning @dchur 

That looks brilliant! Nice work and definently worth the effort.

Dave