I recently had to patch a large hole in a wall (a past owner of my house used shoddy workmanship and zero planning).

Over the weekend, I started painting the patched hole – primer, then house paint.

While painting, I started thinking – modern house paint is a pretty amazing mixture of chemicals.  House paint needs to do and be a lot of things at different times – it needs to coat and stick to the paintbrush, it needs to coat the wall smoothly and consistently, hide everything underneath, dry quickly, achieve a specific surface texture, be resistant to fading, chipping, and sometimes even mold and moisture.  Oh, and it needs to come off your tools easily when you’re finished painting.

Modern house paints can contain thousands of chemicals, I’ll cover the major parts:

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