Hi! So I wanted my radiator to be the same colour as my walls and painted it with a wood&metal paint (the paint shop guy said it'd fine and mixed it right up for me) I then sanded, cleaned and painted. A few months later it still has a very strong chemical odour that rises when the radiator heats up. I've been avoiding using it over the summer but I gotta get it sorted!
Any ideas why this is the case?
What can I do to fix it?
Thankyou! :)
UPDATE: Thankyou for the responses. The paint gent said it was water based! Obviously not. Thankyou for your help.
Are you a tradesperson and able to answer this question?
I would think your paint 'expert' mixed a solvent based paint for you. All solvent (oil based) paint takes a while before the smell fades away but heat from a radiator makes the smell even stronger.
Unfortunately the real fix is to strip the paint off and do it again in a water-based product. If that's not an option then you either need to just wait and hope the smell eventually fades, or you could try painting over it with a special primer like Zinsser BIN which is designed to block odours, then repaint with a water based paint in your chosen colour. There's no guarantee that will work but I have used BIN a couple of times for this purpose and it was effective.
It looks as though the paint shop guy doesn't exactly know what he is talking about! A strong chemical smell suggests he has sold you a non-water based paint which would be ineffective for this use case. Your options now are to either strip the existing paint and repaint with a water based paint, or to use a special zinsser to try and trap the smell, you may then paint over the blocker with your chosen colour of any water based paint!
