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I spent 7 months painting over wet drywall patches and a $12 moisture meter finally called me out
I was patching a spot near the shower in my upstairs bathroom last spring where the paint kept bubbling. I figured it was just cheap paint or bad prep, so I scraped, sanded, primed with two coats, and repainted. Two weeks later, bubbles again. I did this four separate times. My neighbor Dave, who used to do restoration work in Rochester, watched me haul the ladder up for the fifth round and just said, "You ever check the wall with a meter before you paint?" I had no clue what he meant. Picked up a $12 pin meter at the hardware store, stuck it in the drywall, and it pegged out at over 25 percent. The whole time I was painting over a slow leak from the shower valve behind the wall. Seven months of repainting because I never checked the actual problem. So here's the thing I want to argue about: should people always moisture test before painting a patch, or is that overkill for small cosmetic fixes? I say yes now, but I want to hear from people who think I just got unlucky. Where do you draw the line between troubleshooting and being paranoid?
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