There has been a heroic effort here in Louisville to paint over graffiti. They can’t seem to match the colors very well so now we have a lot of various grey splotches everywhere.
What is the preferred method, roller or spray?
Kinda depends on the substrate, but in general a roller will put out more product thereby concealing the unwanted better. If your doing it, just PW the surface, get a thick roller cover for brick/block/concrete, and roll out a square/rectangle over the unwanted thing (unless they want the whole wall done).
EDIT: price in throwing away your roller covers for each job. Get a dark paint to cover the unwanted, charcoal, black, dark grey, brown etc they hide it better. Grey wouldd probably bet your best bet as you already have splotches all over town.
It might help to prime it first.
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Thanks, I’ll check with the city and see if they allow it.
Airless sprayer and 5-gallon buckets all day long. Rollers are child’s play for exterior concrete paint
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I’m not disagreeing with you, but his post made it seem like he was just covering some graffitti. In the case of some simple tagging, it would be quicker with a 5 gal bucket, a roller, screen, pole, and canvas tarp(s). 1 - 1.5" nap covers a lot of crap. If he is painting a full wall, well, a sprayer is faster and generally gets into the nooks and crannys better. I was thinking that since louisville is a city, I imagine spraying would require masking, taping, and tarping, and probably getting vehicles moved or covered and hoping for a good wind day. In my mind I envisioned a little 4x8 section needing covered, even a 10x10 is quick and easy with a roller and pole.
Most cheap and dirty tagging is done at personal height, so no ladders are usually needed. The real taggers like people to see their work, and generally speaking it looks better than someone just tagging their name or a phrase on a wall crappily. Most people just want it covered cheap and done yesterday. All I can say for sure is that based on his post, it appears some painting crews are going to be making bank down there.
As a PW I would think he would look into remediation. there are several threads on here that talk about various graffitti removers, but it seems like a mashup of some worked and some just reduced the visibility. I haven’t seen a thread with a definitive winning product. I’ve tried some of the citrus/acid based stuff on latex with lackluster results (too deep into the pore of the brick). I did have better results on vinyl but not great (shadows). I found that the turbo works well sometimes.
Do you have a graffitti award winner that you use? I still look for tagging to experiment on, but I live in the boonies so it is hard to find except for on the government properties and I don’t want their hassle.
Sorry this is so long. I don’t want you to think I am attacking you, because I am not, just trying to ascertain your position and reasoning. I am currently waiting for it to heat up outside to do outside work and got keyboarditis. Being retired and it being winter, I have an abundance of free time right now.
Have a good day. By the way, I ordered one of those scrapers you mentioned, but I don’t think it will flex over the dettails on that handrail. It may be useful for another project I have planned.
You’re all good boss, disagreements about process are important and healthy. I was picturing him giving estimates to the city to cover long stretches that have been patch-painted before, and offering a fresh solid coat across 20-50 yards. Bases of overpasses, that sorta thing.
I haven’t don’t any graffiti work at all, but I’ve painted a hell of a lot of concrete retaining walls; both with rollers and with an airless. I remember how happy I was after the first day using our new airless lol. After a little practice, the overspray is negligible.
But yeah, I agree; if it’s just patchwork, break out the roller. It’s a pain in the butt to properly clean an airless, definitely not worth it for a 10x10 section!
Edit:. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find a hundred uses for that scraper. Its flexibility will surprise you, I think it’d do a killer job on the very top part of that handrail. But you’re right, the details might give you some trouble
Get a close colour match to existing with a colour sample deck.
If its over 50m2 I might break out the big Airless .
Not worth setting it up and cleaning out most of the time.
I also have a battery Graco sprayer but once again the roller is quicker most situations and if I need to move to multiple sites that have the same colour I just wrap it up in a plastic sheet that can keep it from drying out for up to a couple of days.
Spray whatever you possibly can is my recommendation. However, if you’re doing this downtown, Broadway, Muhammad Ali, etc., be careful about overspray. Lots of cars in the area to be concerned about. You ideally need a relatively calm day when spraying.
My advice is for you to go to Sherwin Williams and ask what the best exterior paint for covering graffiti would be. I painted in the Falls City area up there for many years. I’m in the country now, Eddyville, Kentucky area. Got the hell out of Louisville!
Why don’t they remove the graffiti instead of painting over it?
There’s just so much of it and Louisville doesn’t have much money to work with.
I tried to get a pic of an example.
That looks awful AFTER covering it.
Just hire Cibo!
It’s next to a coal fired power plant, most walls aren’t that dirty but you get the idea. They had a campaign last year of graffiti ‘removal’ and this is the result all over the city.
There was a lot of ‘RESIST 45’ on overpasses with resulting DIY spray can coverups. The two tags I see the most are LUCID and ZAYBO, whatever the heck that means.
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Looking at that stretch, I’m standing by my airless sprayer comment. After cleaning, of course.
Lol cleaning, that’s a good one.
I mean, paint doesn’t like to stick to dirt (or mildew)
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