Q. I’m sorry, but you are wrong about your advice in the used-paint column last month.
Water-based paint can be used almost indefinitely, even after it’s been frozen. It’s water-based! All that might happen is that it will get a little thinner.
I’ve used paint and stains even after they were frozen, and it was fine. Why throw out good paint, especially when it’s hard to dispose of it properly anyway? I’m not trying to be smart. I just don’t get your reasoning.
A. Well, the nerve! How dare you … Oh, all right, you did say you were not trying to be smart, and I got into this advice business hoping to bring a kinder, gentler, more sympathetic and polite tone to matters of home repair and maintenance, inspired in part by Miss Manners (Judith Martin). So no hard feelings.
There are two reasons I like getting the occasional slightly cranky letter questioning my advice. First, I re-examine the issue closely and sometimes learns something new I can share with readers. Secondly, I re-examine the issue closely and discover I was right all along. Everyone needs reassurance occasionally.
In this case, I’m going with the latter. You have extrapolated some conclusions from what I wrote that are not my conclusions or my advice. I would never advise, for instance, that you throw out paint that accidentally got frozen but that appears, upon thawing, to still be usable. In fact, I griped about the design of paint cans that wastes a lot of paint.
However, as I peruse the instructions on five brands of water-based latex paint, I note that somewhere on every can is the phrase, “protect from freezing” or similar words. When the manufacturer says “protect from freezing,” there’s probably a good reason.
From experience, I can name some: burst cans, condensation-induced rust on rims and lids, lids popped (causing evaporation) and pigments and carriers so badly separated that only extensive, arduous remixing will render them usable again.
Similar problems could occur if the paint is exposed to very high heat–left out in the sun, stored too close to a radiator, etc. I have no reason to doubt your word that you have successfully reused water-based paints that have been frozen and thawed, maybe more than once. So I don’t think you are wrong. I just think you have been lucky, as I know of people who have had valuable paint ruined by bad storage.
My attitude is, “Heck, why take the chance?” For instance, I’ve parked my car in red zones a couple of times briefly and not gotten a ticket, but I generally thinks it’s a bad idea.
You do raise a good issue about the difficulty of disposing of unwanted latex paint. This gives me the opportunity to point out that there are many national and local organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity and Rebuilding Together (formerly Christmas in April), as well as many local governments, with programs to accept donations of usable latex paint to help with public projects, graffiti control or even to ship paint to impoverished countries to paint schools and clinics.
A call to your city hall and a bit of looking around will help you find a people and organizations who would love that old paint you no longer need or want. So, sorry to disagree with you, but I hope I’ve done so, as you did, without being disagreeable. This is not a contest, and the idea is that we’re all in this to help each other out a bit.
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