The interiors need painting - 6 of seven rooms.
Is it worth it to hire a painter, or can I get away with doing it myself?
I am decent with my hands, but not great. (I can assemble furniture and do minor repairs to my car.)
How many hours does painting take? Is there anywhere I can find tips etc?
Thanks in advance.
Do a search… there are lots of sites that talk about interior painting. I have done it many times myself… and I wouldn’t consider myself particularly handy… but it’s a hard, smelly, tedius, boreing and exhausting job that I would much rather pay someone else to do. I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t paint a room… but if you can afford not to do it why would you want to?
Visit a hardware store & get the equipment, a sprayer & a fan tip & some latex that works with that sprayer, it’s really pretty easy to do it yourself inside. If you hire someone it Usually costs about $250 per room, including plastering if needed. As that’s what my friend paid this month.
Welcome to the wonderful world of home ownership! :rolleyes:
Call a painter and get a quote. When you come to, go to a good paint store (NOT Home Despot) and have them set you up.
You’ll need a brush for cutting in the edges, a roller, a roller tray, a few throwaway buckets (Never paint from the can) and some drop cloths. Oh, and some paint. Spend the money and get the good stuff. It’s worth it.
It’s not rocket science, just take your time.
I’d advise strongly against a sprayer unless you like to spend hours masking things off and dealing with a messy cleanup afterwards.
Unless you just have the money to spend or are in a hurry, I’d recommend doing it yourself. The money you will save will easily finance a nice vacation instead.
It will go easier if you have a partner to help. When my wife and I paint, I usually do the brush work around the edges and she does the big areas with a roller. It doesn’t take us long to do a room. Last time, we only did one or two rooms each weekend rather than trying to knock out the whole house at once. It seemed less a hassle that way because we’d just quit when we got tired of painting and work on other things or relax. That was the plan, anyway. In reality, my wife ended up finishing out the rest of the house while while I was at work and out of her way. She knocked out about 1000 sqft of house in less than two days. She is lightning with the roller.
I can’t add much to Shiva’s equipment suggestions, but don’t forget an extension for the roller that will let you reach the highest point you will be painting and a bench or ladder to stand on to reach the high points with a brush.
Take down all the curtains and blinds, move the furniture to the middle of the room and cover it and go to town. When painting the baseboards, keep a wet rag handy (presuming water-based paint) to clean up drops on the rug. If you have tile you can let the paint dry and gently peel or scrape hte paint off intead. It should come right up.
Good luck and happy painting.
[[Unless you just have the money to spend or are in a hurry, I’d recommend doing it yourself.]]
Wait, Boxcar. Sounds like you recommend having the wife do it while you’re at work. 
Jill
How long will it take? Depends on how many cats you have playing with the drop sheets.
For a ball park figure, just measure out the length of the walls and estimate a minute per foot per coat. Don’t forget to count the ceiling. For baseboards, doors and windows, again calculate a minute per foot of whatever surface you are painting. Add it all up and add about 10% for light surface prep (e.g. a couple of nail holes) and clean up of brushes and rollers.
For example, a 15x20 room with a 4x8 door and two 4x5 windows would come out as:
walls = 70 min
ceiling = 20 min
baseboards = 66 min
door = 20 min
windows = 2x18 = 36 min
Subtotal = 212 min
10% prep and clean up = 21 min
Total = 233 min = a bit under 4 hours
Since you are new to it, double your estimates for the first few rooms until you get up to speed. Add extra time for heavy surface prep (e.g. washing walls or fixing a lot of holes), and add extra time for fancy trim (e.g. many small window panes).
You might wish to leran a bit about cutting before you begin, for it will make a big difference in how nice your job looks.
If you have storage space, get top quality hair brushes, heavy cotton drop sheets, robust rollers, a spinner and a metal brush, and a high bucket for spinning with a lid for preserving the solvent. With the right gear, you can zip along.
And then when you get good at painting, you can move on to hanging wallpaper. That is a good test of your marriage, because if wallpapering a room doesn’t cause a divorce, nothing will.
Go for it. I’ve done it a few times, even got paid for it once, or rather I got money taken off my rent for painting another apartment. I think its kinda fun, actually. I love the smell too.
Thanks for the tips guys.
I really want to do it myself, but Mrs. Lucwarm is putting a lot of pressure on me to hire someone 
My thinking is that if I do it myself, I’ll know I’m using the highest quality paints, and I’ll know I’m not cutting any corners. (This is important to me because the house has lead paint and I have two little kids.)
On the other hand, my “day job” keeps me pretty busy.
Heh-heh. The last time I wallpapered, I did it all by my lonesome, less arguments that way. Hanging the actual paper is fun in a weird way, it’s the prep work that’s a pain.
As far as painting goes, I would heartily recommend getting a Wagner Power Roller. It’s battery operated and the tank holds a gallon of paint. Cleanup is a bit of a pain, but you can really go to town painting large surfaces.
We had 5 days between taking possession of our house and having our furniture delivered. In that time, we bought all the paint, paper and borders, plus some chair rail. I did the painting (Dining room, office, and 3 bedrooms), hubby did the chair rail (diding room and office) and papering (above the chair rail in the office), we both did the borders (kitchen and one bathroom). I was sort and tired for days, but it beat having to move the furniture in addition to painting.
Once we agree on colors, we’re going to paint the hall, the living room, and the kitchen. About that time, I expect we’ll be ready to moce again… <sigh>
Bottom line, DIY painting is very doable with proper planning and prep, very satisfying, and a big savings.
Since you’re brave and gung-ho enough to give it a shot yourself, why don’t you give it a go in one room? If that works out, move on. If, however, it doesn’t work out so well, hire a painter to do the other rooms.
This is what happened to me when I first bought my condo. I’m pretty handy, but I found out that painting is not my bag. Best money I ever spent. It took me three days to paint one room. Once I called in the painter, it took him two days to do the entire rest of the condo (bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, hallway, giant livingroom.)
Good luck with your new home!
-j
In my experience, it is a lot harder than it looks. I agree with smoke. Try one room and see how it goes.
What state are you in? Massachusetts, at least, has pretty strict laws about lead abatement (including covering lead paint). Owners are only allowed to do certain kinds of jobs, and you have to take a lead safety class first.
Letting the wife do it IS the easiest way.
The agreement was as proposed, just a room or so a weekend but I think that genetically Mrs Boxcar just has a lower tolerance for mismatched and half-painted walls then I do.
I’ve painted the inside of my duplexes many a time, so I have some experience with this. Painting is one of the easier DIY projects, but it can be boring. Here are a few tips.
The quality of paint matters. I’ve been happy with Behr(sp?) paints from Home Depot.
Instead of a drop cloth, I use a large cardboard box that has been flattened. It is much easier to set this solidly against the wall than a cloth and it is easy to move it around the room as you go. Sometime a piece of plywood will do.
Remove the switchplates from the light switches and outlets. Just go around the room take off the screws and drop it all into a sack. Other fixtures that I need to paint around are dealt with on an case-by-case basis. Sometimes I’ll remove them, sometimes I’ll just loosen them up so I can get around them, and sometimes I’ll just carefully paint around them.
For cut-ins (painting around the trim, etc.) I use a foam pad. These come in lots of different designs, but the idea is the same. There is a thin layer of foam to which is attached a fuzzy outer layer. This is attached to a plastic handle of some kind. Hmmm… I don’t think I’m describing this too well. Anyway these are cheap and work great.
Hope this helps.
I used to be a painter. If you do it right, you will spend far more time in preparation than you actually spend painting. This is the “secret” of professional work: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Here are some random tips.
Get everything out of the room you are going to paint. Can’t or don’t want to do that? You’re already in trouble. There are a half-dozen great reasons for doing this, which I will be happy to explain if necessary.
Cover everything. Absolutely everything. Every square foot of floor, no matter how far away from the wall, every square inch of window. Cover the footpath going into and through the next room.
Have a pair of shoes you use in the room you’re painting, which you take off before you leave the room. I kid you not: bad professionals spend as much time cleaning up after themselves–or concealing the damage they’ve done–as they do actually painting. I should know: I worked with 'em, and cleaned up after 'em.
If you’re going to spackle, don’t use Spackle! Don’t use any vinyl-based filling materials. Instead, get some of that 20-minute E-Z Sand, which comes powdered in a bag, and use that. You can sand it flat and do a really nice job with a minimum of experience, if you take the time to follow the directions printed on the bag. The vinyl stuff will make your room look like a Clifford Styll painting.
Tape up the windows exceptionally well. One trick is to use a lot of masking tape, then use a razor blade to cut away the tape which is stuck to the stuff you want to paint. If you are going to the super-flash job, remove the brass window hardware as well. Number each window and put the hardware in separate numbered Ziploc bags. Also, as you finish, remember to razor blade all the moving parts of the window before you open it. Otherwise, the job’s ruined.
The basic method that worked the best for me was this: move, cover, tape, tape, tape, tape, caulk, spackle, sand, dust, quit. Come back later, cover all the spots you missed the day before, then cut, cut again, and roll. Some will disagree with me on the order but few will disagree with the preparation. A huge number of jobs go unfinished because once that crap is on the walls, the job seems to be done. Preparation goes a long way toward actually achieving that.
Since you’ve spent an entire day preparing, clean up can take less than a half an hour, but you should really wait a day before you clean up. It’s your own place, so do it one room at a time, and expect it to take time.