Best way to fill holes in concrete before painting
Rough concrete is covered in thousands of pockmarks and visible block lines that make walls look unfinished. Because applying enough material to hide these flaws is difficult and expensive, people turn to paint as a budget-friendly alternative, but still struggle to fill the holes and smooth the surface beforehand.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Skim coating the surface with plaster, thin set, or joint compound
- 2Building a framed interior wall with drywall in front of the concrete
- 3Applying a parge coat, scratch coat, and stucco
- 4Applying thick elastomeric masonry stucco paint
- 5Using a cementitious product to skim coat the concrete block
- 6Pressure washing and scraping off botched plaster to start over
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Problem is there's thousands of holes, or pock marks, on the surface of the concrete. What's the best way to fill the holes, smooth the surface, and prepare for paint?”source ↗
“Unfortunately they were not able to get enough on there to make it look finished so we’ve decided to attempt to paint it.”source ↗
Where this came up
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