Calcimine Paint

This horrible chalk like paint was used before and during the 1930’s. I know all about calcimine paint, because I had first hand experience which was not pleasant.
In the ‘30’s they sold this paint which was not paint; it was powder in a little box. You put it in a bucket, mixed water with it and instantly you had a type of paint that would cover wet plaster. In those days they finished walls and insulated with plaster. It took a long time for it to “cure”. For the impatient and the poor, they spent ten cents for a box of calcimine and “painted their ceilings and walls.”
Well forty years later, the calcimine was still partially on the walls. It would peel in spots, but mostly stick.
Wally and I bought a house in Flandreau, South Dakota for $3500.00. To say it needed a lot of work was an understatement. It needed an army of workers. We had an army of my husband’s brothers and their wives, so we started to work.
The people that had lived there before, were American Indians. They had made their living by making pipes and other souvenirs out of pipestone rock. These things were carved and ground in the house.
When we started the walls were pink which reflected the dust from the pipestone which was pink.
I can remember my sister-in-law with a bucket of water and a rag scrubbing the dining room wall. Her rag of course, was almost red with pipestone dust.
When all the walls were scrubbed we started to paint. There was a really big problem. The roller that was full of paint remained full of paint. I applied it, and it came right back and did not stick to the walls. I put the roller in the paint again. The same thing happened.
I found Wally and told him what had happened. He did not look happy, but had a sick little grin on his face. He said, “I think it is calcimine”. Well I said “What in the world is that?’ He told me all about the powdered chalk like paint they had used during the depression.
Oh what a mess we had. We scrubbed, we sanded, and in some rooms we even had to panel over the stuff because it would not come off.
I remember the upstairs bathroom. I did not want to go through all that work. I just painted and painted until I had it covered. Little did I know that eventually it would let loose and peel off into little petals of paint and gently fall to the floor.
Calcimine was a poor man’s answer to a quick paint job or a cover that made the walls look clean for spring house cleaning.
Unlike some people, calcimine has left a legacy that many people have inherited.