Read through almost any website or magazine aimed at the
do-it-yourselfer, and you’re almost certain to find someone gushing that a
fresh coat of paint can completely change the look of your room, house,
cabinets, furniture… just about anything but the family minivan. Come to think of it,
there’s probably a website somewhere with instructions on how to update the
look of your wheels with a fresh coat of paint.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, you need to know
that there are two basic kinds of paint – whether you’re going to paint your
walls, your siding, or that old dresser you picked up at a yard sale. The two
kinds are latex and oil-based, and sometimes they just don’t play well together.
While it’s possible to paint over oil paint with latex
and vice versa, doing so could require additional prep work or even adding a coat of primer.
It’s usually easier to just match the paint composition to what’s already
there. If you need to buy paint for touch-ups or to repaint some trim, it’s almost
essential to match oil to oil and latex to latex. If you’re not the original
painter, though, how do you tell? Believe it or not,
