Since moving into our house a little over a year ago, I’ve painted six rooms. This is after having painted eleven rooms the previous year between two houses. I thought after that year I wouldn’t ever touch a paint brush again, but look, here I am doing it again! Henry and I have lived in seven houses in sixteen years. I’ve done a lot of painting. Here are a few painting tips I’ve figured out along the way. Hopefully they can help you next time you pick up a brush.
1. Have a good trim brush
2. Take the time to tape the trim and baseboards. (make sure to dust them first so the tape sticks) It makes nice clean lines, but also ensures you don’t have speckled baseboards from the roller’s spattering.
3. The economy rollers work fine, just make sure to de-lint them first.
4. Patch nail holes and sand any previous drips or imperfections in the wall. I don’t take the time to sand the entire wall or wipe it down. I do dust the trim and floor boards and remove any visible dirt.
5. Use good drop cloths. (Paint seeps through bed sheets so double them up or be careful of heavy drips)
6. Take off the outlet covers and light switch cover.
7. I’ve used Behr, Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams paint. They all work well.
8. Paint with primer in it is thick…. Very thick. It won’t cover as much as a gallon without primer.
9. It’s difficult to paint ceilings.
10. Use flat paint on ceilings.
11. Flat paint has a hard time sticking to semi-gloss paint. Use a primer first.
12. For dark colors like red, use a gray primer. Trust me.
13. Have a damp rag on hand to clean up drips
14. Go barefoot so you can feel if you step in paint. (instead of figuring it out when you have footprints across your carpet)
15. When painting with semi-gloss, don’t let the cutting in paint dry before rolling the wall under it.
16. With flat paint you can paint in sections. When it dries it all blends in.
17. Semi-gloss highlights any imperfection in a wall.
18. You will always need to roll a second coat. (if you cut-in with a nice generous amount – but not so much it runs – you should only have to cut-in once)
19. It’s better to do two light coats than one gloppy, drippy one.
20. It takes longer to prep a room than it does to paint it.
21. Painting is not for someone in a hurry.
22. Unless the trim is super clean, once you paint the walls, the trim will look like they need painted too.
What painting tricks have you learned?
(c) 2016 Leighann Marquiss
Comments (8)
Kenny and I argue over the “semi-gloss” versus “flat paint” use to hide wall imperfections. Our house is 115 years old, and the original plaster walls throughout the house all have “hills and valleys” and there is no such thing as a square corner. anywhere. he insists on flat paint to hide the undulating walls. i insist on semi-gloss on every single wall. the guy at the Lowes paint desk agrees with Kenny…and now you have produced a second opinion to my side of the argument. thank you! 🙂 ~liz
hehe I’ve learned that painting textured walls is not my favorite and I’m not that great at painting.
Liz, come to a compromise and go with a satin finish.
I’m actually right in the middle of washing my walls with baking soda and vinegar . Bummer I should have read your blog sooner . 🙂 I have a professional painter coming on the 4th to paint 4 rooms. I have 6 door frames in my kitchen. and a plate rail and tons of wood to paint around in the TV room. Waaaaay too much cutting in for me. Kudos to you with all your painting. Question . How do you choose colours?
@Heather: My first floor (we painted it all except the dining room and laundry room) are all the same color – a taupe color from Sherwin Williams called Bungalow Beige (SW7511). The powder room is Parisian Taupe fro Behr, but they’re actually pretty close in color. Long story. The living room is Greek Villa (SW7551). I knew I wanted that room to be a creamy white to go with the curtains. I picked these colors because we like color on the walls but I wanted a calm, neutral throughout the house. I would’ve love to have done grey with our dark hardwoods, but Henry doesn’t like gray. So we stuck with taupe. I chose the taupe by going to Sherwin Williams and standing in front of an entire wall of colors. Taupe can have a pink or purple undertone depending on the base so I tried to find a true taupe with a brown undertone. Then I took the color card and held it up to a bunch of whites and creams and liked it with Greek Villa. I really didn’t overthink it too much. 🙂 I picked the two at the same time since I knew the rooms butted up to one another and I’m thinking of painting our kitchen cabinets. I thought’d it be easier to paint the cabinets the same as the living room….
The rooms upstairs that I painted are the girls’. I picked their colors by asking them what color they wanted, finding their curtain fabric and then matching the shade to the fabric.
If you’re trying to pick colors for your house, one way to do it is find inspiration from a rug, picture, or fabric that’s going in the room…. Hope this helps. Another tip is to go 2 shades lighter than what you like on the card…. just trust me on this. 🙂 I should’ve put that in the list. Maybe I’ll add it now!
@Liz – I prefer flat. Semi-gloss will show the imperfections on your walls…. especially old, plaster walls. I painted plaster in one of our houses – 9 rooms worth. I used flat in every single one except the bathroom and kitchen. Good luck!
I painted 8 rooms in our old house and 10 rooms so far in our current house. It’s exhausting but I just love the before and after satisfaction of a job well done.
I love Valspar paint and usually use a satin finish. It wipes off pretty easily which is important to me because there’s lots of little hands touching my walls 🙂
@Judy – that’s a lot of rooms….. I hear you on the many small hands. I use magic eraser on our walls. works wonders.