What has run more than Paula Radcliffe?

Flippin’ Dulux Weathershield paint – that’s what!

According to my blog archives, it was May 2011 when I made and painted Herbie’s current roof box.  At that time I posted an article comparing the performance of the five different paints I used.  You can read it here if you’re interested – if you are doing any of this type of painting you might well find it useful.  Here’s one of the pictures so you get the , er, picture.

 

The cream colour is the Dulux Weathershield and it easily came out bottom in my comparative paint test at that time.  I found that it didn’t cover well, and being so thin (yes I did give it a good stir) it ran all over the place.

Now four years later the old box needs a bit of a refurb, so I have it at home for repainting.    Here is the work in progress

It’s a slow process using all those colours bordering each other.  Lots of masking up and having to wait before one colour is dry before you can put masking tape on it to do the next colour.   At two coats per colour, that’s ten days in theory but the pesky Weathershield is adding to that. Read on.

The first thing I noticed was that in spite of being called Weathershield, the Dulux had worn the least well of the five paints and had flaked off or worn away in several places.  “Well you won’t be using that again” I hear you say.  Sadly, being a miserly old git, I couldn’t bring myself to waste nearly a tin full of the stuff I had left over from last time, so foolishly I had another go with it.  I have to tell you, it is even worse than I remember.  Especially bad was the propensity to bleed under the (best quality) masking tape. Not only does it retain all its faults from last time, but now I notice it takes ages to harden off too, so I have to wait an extra day before I can put masking tape on it so do the next colour.  Grrrr!

Maybe if Dulux stood over me they might point out that I wasn’t using it right.  Well all I can say is the other paints get the same treatment and do a lot better.  Maybe if that sheepdog of theirs hadn’t got his hair all over his eyes he could see properly to make some better paint.

Interestingly the paints which had survived the best over the four years were the proper coach paints i.e. the dark grey Craftmaster and the red Hempel, so as well as being the easiest to paint with, they last longer too.  Well you get what you pay for I guess – they are considerably more expensive.