House Painting Lessons Learned

I am almost finished painting the downstairs bathroom, but I wanted to take a break and share some lessons learned from this experience:

> Put the dogs and kids to bed before painting to avoid carribean blue dog tails and kids’ comments like “Mom, you missed a spot”, or “Mom, I told you missed that spot over there…”

> Don’t step in the paint tray especially when full of paint

> Don’t tape around towel holders; use a ruler to avoid painting the toilet paper holder, towel holder, sink. Tape can peal off the paint you just put down

> Techno music makes me hyper; blues music calms me down; pick the music that suits your need. I find blues music best for detail and techno music to quickly roll paint on the wall.

> Don’t smoke a cigarette as you stir the paint…

> I prefer the foam rubber paint tools to the standard brushes and fabric rollers. Your son’s art/paint brushes are great for missed corners and detail just be sure to clean up and return before he knows its missing.

I just thought I should share these mini-lessons learned so that others will not repeat my mistakes or are at least prepared not to repeat my mistakes.

Don’t stand on the toilet seat when painting… or doing anything else for that matter.

One of these days, should enough interest be shown, I may be convinced to relate the story about “ChiefScott takes down shower curtain/undergoes surgery/flies trans-Atlantic.”

Trust me you’ll laugh. I still can’t.

A few tips I can share:

  1. For quick trips to the hospital, make sure your workers know to point the sprayer gun at another human. The mind works incredibly fast when the blood stream is injected with latex paint.

  2. Never appoint a foreman dumber than you to a jobsite. He may just get the wrong color of paint for the wrong trim on the wrong house.

  3. Beer is a richly deserved reward at the end of the day, but only at the end of the day. Rewards should not be consumed anytime before 7:AM.

  4. Homeowners can be finicky as they negotiate a contract with you. Have your workers use other terms than “the bitch” and “that cranky old asshole” while negotiating.

Just a few lessons learned . . .

ChiefScott, if I smile sweetly and make all kinds of sexual promises that I intend to keep, will you please tell the shower curtain story?

:::smiling sweetly, flipping hair behind my shoulder, and batting my eyelashes::::

LOL, kiffa – love the blue-tailed dog. I live in an apartment, so painting is somebody else’s problem :slight_smile:

I’ll flatter you and tell you lies, Chief, if you’ll tell your little story :wink:

Catrandom

Flattering the Chief in a post with two smilies. What was I thinking?!

Catrandom

Have the guy at the paint store calculate how much paint you need for a room by the square footage, then multiply this by at least 2 for the amount of paint you will actually use.
– Sylence

The biggest mistake I made when I repainted the inside of my house: I knew that I was getting new carpet all the way through, so I didn’t have to be careful. The paint job was beautiful.

They came and laid the new carpet. It was shorter ply than what I had…so now I have a ring around every room where the new carpet didn’t come up on the baseboard as far as the old carpet. I’ll have to get a professional to come in and fix it because I don’t trust myself to paint that close to the new carpet.

Wonderful tips, kiffa. Especially the dog’s tail, who woulda thought???

My biggest tip from a mistake, don’t move the ladder with the paint pan on it, TAKE IT OFF, trust me on this one!! Not fun to clean paint off EVERYTHING as it falls (in slow motion, I SWEAR!!) and manages to strike every surface possible. That was over three years ago, and I still wince when I think of that mess!

For doing bathrooms & other smooth walls, use a PAD not a brush. Three times as fast, four times as neat. No drip at all…really.

I have a sort of karma of the universe story related to painting. When I sold my house last year, I painted my teenage son’s room so it would look better when the house was shown, but since I had included a carpet allowance in the selling price, I didn’t bother to put down a dropcloth in the room since it was obvious the new owners would be replacing the carpet. Well it turned out the people who bought the house from me had trouble getting enough downpayment, so through a little creative financing I let them use the carpet allowance as part of their downpayment and they were able to purchase the house. But I felt kind of bad that I didn’t use a dropcloth when I painted as they were going to have to live with the carpet in the room. Well about a week after the sale I got $100 check in the mail from the new owners for something they had agreed to compensate me for above and beyond the sale price. The check bounced and my bank charged me $4 for depositing the bad check. I had already moved out of state so it wasn’t worth my while to try and remedy the bad check, but now I don’t feel bad about the paint all over the carpet.