Thanks a lot Cody, Bezoar, and Noseoil! I really appreciate the encouragement. There have been aspects of this project that have gone easier than I'd anticipated and there have been aspects that have been much, much more difficult.
It's not all rainbows and butterflies quite yet, unfortunately. What I had passed off as being "part of the texture" the last few days actually turns out to be an unexpected demon, commonly known by painters as "solvent popping". Each of the little speckles in the photo is a tiny void of air that didn't make its way through the surface. As we all know, "voids" are a horrible word in projects like these.
After a discussion with Monstaliner over the phone this morning, I have another gallon on order. We couldn't quite nail down the culprite, but it was likely caused by the base coat not being cured enough, the top coat being too thick, or the air temperature. It was low to mid 80's when we applied and we waited approximately 2 hours between coats, since the can stated that re-coat times would be as low as 1-1.5 hours in warm temps. The base coat had hardly any tack left to it when we applied the top coat, so I'm not 100% sold on that theory either.
Regardless of the cause, we'll be sanding down the top coat enough to open up all of these little voids so that they can be filled with a new coat. From what I can tell after a little sanding in spots, the base coat is void free. The gentleman from ML said that I probably didn't have anything worth worrying about if I put it off a year or so. The thought of putting it off is tempting, however, we've worked too hard to get to this point to finish the project with a flawed end product.
I'm thinking we might name this thing
Tenacity...
by western traveler » Fri Jul 23, 2021 10:35 am 
