Walls and Ceilings - Peeling Paint - New Construction

We have small areas that are peeling off with pressure. We are do-it-yourselfers for the entire project... hiring day labor and subcontractors for the stuff we can't do ourselves.

New construction, heavy hand trowled texture that was allowed to dry for a month. We sponged the walls, allowed that to fully dry, used a PVA primer (Glidden from Home Depot), allowed that to fully dry and then applied two coats of Glidden Evermore latex eggshell paint. Two weeks later we leaned a wooden folding chair against the wall and patches of paint came off with the chair. (we started hanging drywall last December and started with the taping in February, texturing started in early June ... it's now July and we're almost done with the painting... so you can see it's been a long process and things have had more than a good chance to dry before going onto the next step!)

We live in the foothills of California where the humidity this time of year is normally 20% and has recently been up to 40%. We are not using air conditioning or a swamp cooler as yet and have left windows open while allowing the texture, primer, and paint to dry. (Still have second paint coat to do in some rooms).

What did we do wrong? Will we have problems with the paint coming off if we hang pictures on the walls down the road? My husband is very concerned that we may have to re texture, prime and paint the entire house all over again... Any suggestions, ideas, or help out there?

Thank you.

How much is a patch of paint? How hard did you lean the chair? In my opinion Glidden is garbage paint. It's price is cheap for a reason.

Put a piece of masking tape on the wall and snatch it off. This may be more of an indicator of the adhesion. The chair may have put a lot pressure in a small place. Latex paint takes 4 - 7 days to harden.

Did just the paint come off or did the primer come off, too?

Even cheap latex paint should do better than this.

HTH

It was just the paint that came off, the primer stayed on. It was a very small area - about 1/4" by 3.5" The chair was leaning pretty hard against the wall.

I'll try the masking tape trick this afternoon when we go up to the project site.

Thanks for your help!

Good luck; and keep us posted.

I tried the masking tape trick on several walls and none of them peeled. I'm thinking that it was just a fluke and won't happen again. (hoping so anyway!).

We're finishing up on the second coat this week.

Thanks for your help!
Angela