TIPS FOR CLEANING GRAFFITI
CONTRIBUTED BY XENA, STREET WARRIOR
Color Match If You Paint Over Tags
If you decide to paint over a tag, it is critical that you color match so that the repair is not as ugly as the tag was. Suggestions for color matching the paint on commonly tagged items include:
Painters Touch brand:
ACE brand:
Krylon brand:
There are several shades of blue recycle bins and between the followgin two colors you can get a fairly
close match, though we are still working on this.
Experimentation can be the expensive part of graffiti cleanup, in time, energy and money. But once a good color match is found it's much easier, so please share with other neighborhood graffiti busters when you find good color matches and let us know.
Painters Touch brand:
- Hunt Club Green, Satin (dark green garbage cans)
- Winter Grey, Gloss (mail boxes)
- Primer [which is a somewhat darker grey] (grey poles mostly)
ACE brand:
- Red Oxide Primer (for orange garbage cans)
- Chrome Aluminum (corrugated metal and fire hydrants)
- White Gloss (incidental white surfaces)
- Black - satin or flat (for black garbage cans and black metal posts)
Krylon brand:
There are several shades of blue recycle bins and between the followgin two colors you can get a fairly
close match, though we are still working on this.
- True Blue, Gloss (recycle bins)
- Patriotic Blue (recycle bins)
Experimentation can be the expensive part of graffiti cleanup, in time, energy and money. But once a good color match is found it's much easier, so please share with other neighborhood graffiti busters when you find good color matches and let us know.
Using sandpaper to remove graffiti - A nifty way to remove graffiti from sidewalks that is done with that thick textured material is to take a round disk sander pad and put a fairly rough grit of sandpaper on it (say 80 or 60 grit) and put that in a cordless drill and take that to the graffiti. It will just rip it right off. It won't work with thin paint but that gummy thick stuff comes right off. In fact the older the tag the easier it is to remove. It roughs up the sidewalk some but as soon as it rains that washes off.
A finer grit sandpaper will take that weird stuff off metal surfaces nicely so that when you paint over them the tag won't show through. I also found that on the really old garbage cans that are that light green color for which I don't have a paint match lend themselves to the same treatment. Using a finer sandpaper takes off a tag and doesn't do the can much harm.
A finer grit sandpaper will take that weird stuff off metal surfaces nicely so that when you paint over them the tag won't show through. I also found that on the really old garbage cans that are that light green color for which I don't have a paint match lend themselves to the same treatment. Using a finer sandpaper takes off a tag and doesn't do the can much harm.
