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Cream&Sugar™ Ultra

72327 Views 178 Replies 26 Participants Last post by  Philnick, 
Harpmaker
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10-18-13 Addendum: The Valspar paints have changed (and some not for the better) so we are now suggesting that Valspar Signature be used instead of Valspar Ultra. The tint formula is the same. All mixing is the same.


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The change in physical makeup of the metallic silver paint used to make the previous Cream&Sugar™ mix means that particular mix (or series of 3 mixes actually) can no longer be recommended unless the old Craft Smart Metallic Silver is still available to you.

Introducing Cream&Sugar™ Ultra! Like the Cream&Sugar™ mix before it, Cream&Sugar™ Ultra is a binary mix (only two paints are used). Both paints are usually easily obtained locally throughout the U.S.; development is continuing in the use of a paint available from Home Depot as well which I'm sure will be glad news to our northern neighbors in Canada since there are precious few Lowe's stores there.

The base paint is Valspar Ultra Premium Interior Latex Flat Enamel Base 1 with the following tint and amount - 115-0.67 for a quart of paint.

Addendum:The Valspar Ultra Premium Flat Enamel paint has been renamed by Lowe's to Valspar Ultra Premium Super Flat Finish. The paint is the same, just a different name, so the existing tint formula will still work.

Note that the photo below is NOT the Base 1 paint, but rather the Ultra White base.



For those coming from looking at the original Cream&Sugar™ thread please note that the ratio of base paint to silver paint has changed for Cream&Sugar™ Ultra, it is now 50% base paint and 50% silver paint (a 1:1 ratio).


To make 32 fl. oz. of mix (before thinning for final application) buy the following items:
1 quart Valspar Ultra Premium Super Flat Finish Base 1 tinted 115-0.67 (available at Lowe's)
16 fl. oz. Liquitex BASICS 'Silver' acrylic paint (four 4 oz. tubes or two 8 oz. tubs). This paint is available at most arts and crafts stores such as Michael's and A.C. Moore. It is also available at great discount from many stores on the internet.

Now the tricky part. Since the mix is 1:1 that means only 16 oz. of the quart of Valspar paint is used, to which is mixed the 16 oz. of LBS (Liquitex BASICS 'Silver'). While you could just add 32 oz. of LBS to the quart of Valspar paint, LBS is a fairly expensive paint and it would make way more mix than most people would need. So yeah, the tricky part is measuring 16 fl. oz. out of a quart of paint. :D

Because the LBS is so thick the mix DOES NEED TO BE THINNED, even to roll. For those rolling I would recommend adding at least 25% distilled water; those spraying would have to dilute even more depending on their sprayer. Add the water and mix thoroughly, this mix is slow to accept the added water. Mixing thoroughly is VERY important!

For what I will assume would be the standard C&S™ Ultra mix of 16 oz. Valspar and 16 oz. LBS that means an additional 8 oz. of water should be added to thin for rolling. It would be a good idea to also use some of this water to wash out your containers of LBS to get all the paint out. If you are using the 8 oz. tubs of LBS simply pour the water into the tub, cover and shake. If using 4 oz. tubes of LBS I found it works best to inject the water into the almost empty tube with some kind of syringe, close the lid and shake WELL.

Cream&Sugar™ Ultra is a N9.2 screen mix which is brighter than the N9 of the previous Cream&Sugar™ mix. This means C&S™ Ultra will not perform quite as well in ambient light as C&S™, but it also means the mix will be even brighter than C&S™ in a home theater that has controlled lighting and dark walls.

Data and photos to follow.
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Philnick
Yiannis1970 said:
If you roll, i would say to go with 2 coats.
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Of each? I just painted a coat of Kilz and can see that a second would be a good idea. It took my whole quart of the stuff to cover my screen area: 9 3/4' x 5 1/3' (I'm allowing a few extra inches), so I'm going out to get another quart while that dries.

I'll be mixing up 75 oz of C&S Ultra - if I do two coats I'll have just enough, with none left over for patching dings to the screen later.

Phil
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Y
No, no...i mean 2 coats only for the paint...for the primer, one coat is more than enough.
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Philnick
Actually, I found that the first coat of primer (Kilz Premium water-based) looked less than uniform. I just did a second coat of primer that (a) went on much more economically than the first, leaving half of that quart in the can and (b) looks much more uniform.

I'm hoping that will mean that my 75 oz of C&S Ultra will be more than enough for two coats and leave me half a quart or so for patch work the next time it gets dinged.

The first ding, last summer, was when my wife tripped on the way into the theater while carrying a black-painted barbell that dug a gounge in the wall and left behind some black paint as well. That I patched with spackle and painted with some leftover Sherman Williams Luminous White - from seven years ago! It was brighter than the surrounding area but not noticable during most scenes, except for uniform bright areas that fell across the patch. It motivated me to get the Liquitex silver, which took so long that I didn't follow-through.

The second ding was two weeks ago, when I toppled one of my front mains off its stand trying to read its impedance off the back - and that info wasn't even there! I had to find it on the web. I didn't paint over that patch, which was a lighter shade of pale tan, but very small. That put me back into this project. I may finish the whole job today.

"They call Churchill a painter?!? The Fuhrer, he could paint an entire apartment in one day - two coats!" - from Mel Brooks' The Producers​

Phil​
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Philnick
Counter-balancing errors

Since the Valspar can that I had found on their web site was 30, not 32 ounces, I had adjusted the amount of the magenta additive down from 115-0.67 to 115-0.625.

When I got to the Lowe's paint counter I didn't notice that the can was actually a full 32 ounces, and thus had them add the smaller amount of tint.

However, since my 32 ounces of Liquitex Acrylic silver was in eight 4 ounce tubes, when it came time to mix them, I realized that with the addition of less tint to the base to counterbalance the color of the silver, I could bypass the "rinse out the silver paint container with water" step. I took the outer cap off each of the tubes, squeezed it out as much as I could and then rolled it up from the bottom to get the last squirt. I suspect that with a little less silver the screen will be a little less reflective, which is fine, because I don't really want the brighter 9.2 - I was perfectly happy with my old 9.0 original Cream&Sugar screen - which at one coat, with no primer, was probably not even 9.0!

I figure with all of these factors compensating for each other, I'll be pretty happy with the result.

I've painted the first coat of C&S Ultra, which went on easily, more like the second coat of Kilz than the first, so I expect I'll have quite a bit left over for patching.

I mixed it in a plastic 5 quart can - no metal to rust and ruin it the way my old C&S supply died. I simply used my pocket knife to make a small hole in the plastic lid and assembled the stirrer onto my electric drill through that hole. I was thus able to stir it with the drill inside a closed container, avoiding splatter from the mixing.

The Kilz said to wait an hour before re-coating - I waited about an hour and a half.

The Valspar says to wait "two to four hours before re-coating." It looks very nice already, though I covered my projector with a towel to protect it from particulates during this project.

Does the addition of the acrylic paint mean I should wait even longer before applying the second coat?

Any ideas for getting water and acrylic based paint off a grey rug? I stepped in spatters on the dropcloth and then tracked them across my low-pile office-type carpet.
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Philnick
Painted the second coat of C&S Ultra at 10pm Saturday, touched it up a bit at about midnight, and went to bed.

Sunday morning I tested it out, using Dr. Marr's planet in Interstellar, which is nearly monochrome, with high key white skies, to look for streaking. Bothered by a bit I saw near the top center - the kind of thing no one but me would see, but would eventually drive me batty, so I decided to do a third coat.

Went out and bought another 3/8" nap roller, paint tray, and dropcloth, and asked about getting latex paint out of a rug. The guy in the paint department at the hardware store recommended a bottle of water-based stuff with a trigger sprayer that can be set to spray or stream that says "for hard surfaces" (no mention of carpets or cloth), and said to saturate a spatter and scrub it vigorously.

Was nearly dinner-time Sunday before I got back down to the theater. Played my test section of Interstellar and couldn't see the streaks this time. I guess C&S Ultra takes a real long time to dry to the point where streaks go away! Scrubbed doing a third coat and scrubbed the rug instead.

The spray works - sort of - but it's very labor intensive and will probably take days - and many bottles of the stuff.

Elected to watch a movie instead. Looked very good.

C&S Ultra - at least my rendition of it, not bothering with extracting the last little bit of Liquitex from each tube - isn't as grey as the original, in comparison to the surrounding flat white latex paint. But there's no visible trace of the two places where the screen wall had been gashed and patched. I sit ten feet away from my nine and a half foot wide screen - half as far away as the normal recommendation - because I like to feel like I'm on the scene. It's my personal mini-iMax, with high-definition audio as well as video, with large fronts and sides - only the rears are "small," according to my new Yamaha RX-A1030's YPAO test.

Since I trust Harpmaker and Mechman to produce neutral paint formulas, I haven't even bothered recalibrating my projector yet, since there's no obvious difference in the projected image.

Thanks for all the advice!
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mechman
Glad to hear it all worked out for you! :T
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Philnick
Image looks great!

After waiting a week simply enjoying my theater, I decided the paint was stable enough to recalibrate my projector.

I use an old Panasonic PT-AE2000U, a 1080 24p/ 60i LCD rig that uses a pair of crystal sheets that produce duplicate, slightly shifted, images - one to produce a vertically-shifted image and one to produce a horizontally-shifted image. The net effect is to mostly fill in the black grid between the pixels, which remains visible only when standing at the screen, as a tiny dimming in between the pixels. There's no overlap, and thus no loss of sharpness, just the elimination of the "screen door effect." The barely visible grid can be used for focusing with the remote while standing at the screen, but once you're a few feet away you can't see it.

I put a new bulb in the projector a month or two ago.

I use the Digital Video Essentials Blu-ray to calibrate my projector. Contrary to that disk's narrator's assumption, the picture mode that complies with HD video standard ITU R BT. 709 and a 6,500 Kelvin color temperature at its default settings is not one of the modes called "Cinema." According the the projector's manual it's the picture mode called "Color 1."

I found that the only adjustment I had to make to it was to increase the brightness a tiny amount to make the 2% grey bar just visible in the Pluge test pattern. Neither contrast adjustment nor any color compensation, either of color or tint, was necessary. (I guess my errors in the recipe did indeed counterbalance each other with respect to tint!)

I then put on one of my favorites, Cloud Atlas, which is six films in one, each era's interlocking part of the story being shot in a visual style associated with films about that time period. They all looked just right.

The image looks great Thanks again!
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SXRDISBEST
I've been on AVS for about 11 years but recently came over her to see what was being offered in the way of paint. Folks over there said the paint mixes some of you are creating are very color accurate and not necessarily that agressive at fighting ambient light.

This is exactly what I need for my room and I had one question about the general characteristics of this mix. I recently got rid of a Firehawk screen that had some serious screen texture and sparkle issues. While figuring out my next move, I put my image on the wall. Surprisingly, I like the image more than my Firehawk because it's just so much smoother!

The main question I have is whether C&S Ultra will introduce ANY screen artifacts such as speckle on light colored material. I'm super sensitive to it and I'm considering a flat white just so I don't have that problem at all. But if this mix offers something white doesn't but adds color accuracy and brightness without the side effects, then I'll definitely consider.
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O
I have this paint and I have no problems with it. I am very pleased with how mine turned out. I'd say, if you can make the paint using the exact formula provided, then you should give it a try.
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SXRDISBEST
ovillegas said:
I have this paint and I have no problems with it. I am very pleased with how mine turned out. I'd say, if you can make the paint using the exact formula provided, then you should give it a try.
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Did you roll yours or spray? It seems like this would probably be a rollable mix as it's not that aggressive as far as the metallic aspect is concerned. Also, do you know how forgiving C&S Ultra is with surfaces that aren't perfectly smooth? It seems like in general the more silver, the flatter the surface must be in order to get good results. With this being a fairly light mix I'm hoping I can just prime and paint without having to sand a bunch.
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SXRDISBEST said:
Did you roll yours or spray? It seems like this would probably be a rollable mix as it's not that aggressive as far as the metallic aspect is concerned. Also, do you know how forgiving C&S Ultra is with surfaces that aren't perfectly smooth? It seems like in general the more silver, the flatter the surface must be in order to get good results. With this being a fairly light mix I'm hoping I can just prime and paint without having to sand a bunch.
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I sprayed mine on a black out cloth that I got at my local Joann shop for pretty cheap. Having said that, my surface was pretty smooth. Like with any other paint, I would assume that if the surface is not smooth, you will be able to see the imperfections from up-close. I am not sure if the silver will bunch up more on the uneven surface or not.
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Philnick
SXRDISBEST said:
Did you roll yours or spray? It seems like this would probably be a rollable mix as it's not that aggressive as far as the metallic aspect is concerned. Also, do you know how forgiving C&S Ultra is with surfaces that aren't perfectly smooth? It seems like in general the more silver, the flatter the surface must be in order to get good results. With this being a fairly light mix I'm hoping I can just prime and paint without having to sand a bunch.
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I rolled mine on my wall, which is just existing drywall, with all the surface irreqularities from dinging and patching. I didn't sand it except a little where it had been patched. No problem with the metal paint being irregular. (I'm not willing to spray in an enclosed room with no ventilation, particularly since anything in the air would get sucked into the projector and mess it up!)

I've been using C&S for years, both the original formula many years ago and the current version two years ago after the wall got dinged by things falling against it.

I use an LCD projector.

PS Before the paint was dry, there were sparkles, but that went away once the paint had finished drying the next day.
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SXRDISBEST
Philnick said:
I rolled mine on my wall, which is just existing drywall, with all the surface irreqularities from dinging and patching. I didn't sand it except a little where it had been patched. No problem with the metal paint being irregular. (I'm not willing to spray in an enclosed room with no ventilation, particularly since anything in the air would get sucked into the projector and mess it up!)

I've been using C&S for years, both the original formula many years ago and the current version two years ago after the wall got dinged by things falling against it.

I use an LCD projector.

PS Before the paint was dry, there were sparkles, but that went away once the paint had finished drying the next day.
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That's good to know it handles the irregularities well. My main concern is with bright content highlighting the light textured finish on my wall. Putting an image up there now with the light tan color the builder used, looks remarkably good. As long as the C&S paint didn't highlight the texture at all I would be perfectly happy. Even while wearing my glasses, I could hardly see the texture from my seating position.

Do you think a couple of coats of primer would help "soften" the knock down texture before using the C&S?

It basically looks like this:
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Philnick
SXRDISBEST said:
That's good to know it handles the irregularities well. My main concern is with bright content highlighting the light textured finish on my wall. Putting an image up there now with the light tan color the builder used, looks remarkably good. As long as the C&S paint didn't highlight the texture at all I would be perfectly happy. Even while wearing my glasses, I could hardly see the texture from my seating position.

Do you think a couple of coats of primer would help "soften" the knock down texture before using the C&S?

It basically looks like this:
Click to expand...
That's much more deeply textured than my wall - which is basically drywall (powdered plaster between two layers of cardboard).

I'd suggest a layer of spackle over the whole wall to fill in the irregularities. You might have to build it up with a few coats to get it smooth - but that would be a lot easier than trying to sand the whole wall smooth.

Then primer coat it with Kilz (I used two coats) and paint two or three layers of C&S.
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Philnick
I'm back for recommendations for my third screen painting job. First time was the original Cream and Sugar, second time was C&S Ultra.

I'm going to a larger screen (from 9'6" wide to 11'4" wide) by turning my theater sideways, which means an image only 69% as bright (9 foot/lamberts instead of 13 with my old Panasonic PT-AE2000).

Before realizing this, I bought enough Liquitex Basics Silver Acrylic for the job, since last time I had to wait a few months to get it!

Is it possible to make a brighter version of C&S Ultra to compensate - like by increasing the ratio of silver to white paint? It looks like I'd need a screen 44% again as bright. Should I use 44% more silver or 44% more white paint to do this?
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Philnick
By the way, while this thread says it has 18 pages, and 176 posts, I can't get past page 16 and this post (#158) - whether by using the arrow link, the 17 or 18 links or the Last link on the first page. Incrementing the page number in the url doesn't work either - whatever I do, it takes me to the top of page 16!

This is true in both Firefox and Chrome, by the way.
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Philnick
From reading earlier posts in the thread, it appears that the silver paint darkens the mix, so if I want to compensate for a projected image that's 69% as bright (because it's larger), to increase the gain by 44% I should use 1/1.44, or 69% as much silver paint as white paint.

Would this work, and is my math correct?
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Philnick
I'm getting ready to do my third iteration of C&S (my second of Ultra), as my theater is being re-built due to structural repairs to the building.

My screen size is going up to 11.5' wide, so I've upped my recipe to two gallons each of Valspar and Liquitex, just to be sure I have enough to cover the 80 square feet this will be.

I've bought a new, much brighter, projector, a JVC DLA-RS440, since my old Panny won't be bright enough for the larger image, so I'm wondering what color to paint my side walls and ceiling.

Flat white walls and ceiling worked in the past, but the side walls were six or so feet away on each side and the ceiling was a few feet above as well.

Now the side walls will be about a foot or two away, and the image will go up to the ceiling.

Should I go with grey walls and ceiling? How dark? I don't want the room to be so dark during a film that I can't see my snacks!
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Philnick
Belated follow-up. In the fall of 2019 I painted my screenwall's entire 14' by 8' with this mix - I had plenty of paint - and it works beautifully with my 4K projector, including in 3D, where it works better than high-gain screens, as those make it critical to have glasses whose polarization is in the same plane as the projector (there are two varieties out there). This paint disperses the polarization, making that a non-issue.

Also, not being "high gain" it makes masking of letterbox and pillarbox areas unnecessary, as they aren't bright enough to matter.
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