Please share your favorite tips for painting (house interiors)

In My Humble Opinion
1

My mom wears a big squishy foam neck brace when she paints ceilings. That’s really all I’ve got.

I’m asking because I’ve decided to embrace the apartment I live in as my home and want to make it more my own (lease okays painting, stipulating that if I choose dark or intense colors I must return the walls to white before I leave.) I won’t be leaving until 2015 at the earliest so I can live with that.

The thing is, if I’m going to do it, I want to do it right. The last 2 or 3 times the apartment was painted it was done in a rather slap dash fashion. Window trim is all drippy, with a few insects painted on to sills. Outlets, switchplates, and door hardware all have been painted over, at least partially.

I believe, based on some paint bubble archaeology that there are two coats of latex on top of oil based paint, at least on the trim and doors.

Several of the doors are only painted on one side and appear to be solid mahogany. Is there any chance I could successfully strip the 3+ layers of paint and restore them to woody goodness?

Is my best bet to sand all the trim and paint it with oil based paint?

Or should I give up this foolish notion and leave it all drippy, scuffed up white?

2

I’m by no means an expert but have done a few rooms.

Prep, prep and more prep. You need heaps of masking tape. Drips go down so work from top to bottom (in my first room I did the trim between the wall and ceiling last and had a few drips in the corners/where the battens are and the tape lifted).

Stripping doors sounds like a big job - probably need someone to remove them and dip them.

3

If you have some old oil based paint on there it just might be lead based. You don’t want to be chipping or sanding that away. If the building is newer than 1978 then you probably are OK unless somebody had old paint and cheated. I believe it can be checked easily and for free if you take a chip someplace.
Clear out each room if possible. If not, put everything in the center and cover it. Use a roller with a cover on the ceiling to prevent drips>in your face. Don’t skimp on masking tape. Use the blue tape designed not to leak or stick.

Select light colors if you can so going back will be easier.

Use all water based of course, including a stain killer/primer. Some more expensive paints do not require this step.

Don’t cheap on rollers and brushes. Clean everything you can reuse. It will pay dividends next time.

You are obviously skipping what was to be my first step and that is to delay the job until it never happens.

4

House was originally built in 1934.

The more I look around at how much would need to be done the closer I get to your first step.

I might do the bathroom though. It’s 5’ x 7’ and tiled at least half way up, more around the tub. One punch of color might improve my outlook enough.

That’s it, I’ll go by size. If the bathroom goes well I’ll do the second bedroom next, if that doesn’t discourage me I’ll do the kitchen…

I think smaller projects will go a long way towards making things a little less “studen slums” like in my place. I think I’ll strip the slopped on paint from all the metal doorknobs and back plates. And replace switchplate covers. Baby steps.

5

I got laid right in the middle* of painting the last room I painted, and it certainly made the project much more enjoyable.

*I mean this both in the sense of “half-way through the process” and “on the drop-cloth-covered floor, next to the roller pan.”

6

When taping off the baseboards attach one side of the tape to the baseboard and the other side to a piece of dropcloth wide enough to drape over the dropcloth on the floor. No gaps is a lovely thing.

Preparation should take you twice as long as applying the paint at least.
Wash all the walls, sand them and wash them again.
If you’re painting over dark colours or unknown types of paint use a primer.
Use a ladder and move it often. Don’t stretch out to reach, not only do you risk falling you’re much less accurate in applying the paint.
When using the roller large smooth strokes works better and creates a more even coat of paint.

7

Your bathroom idea is lovely - the worst possible thing for your morale is to get halfway through a project and then crap out.

Don’t really worry too much about the lead paint. Yes, lead is bad. On the other hand, it’s mostly bad for kids eating paint chips.

8

goodgodamighty girl, how many questions do you have all at once?

  1. I would NEVER put in the effort to strip somebody else’s wood
  2. I’ve never “washed a wall” before I painted it…if I wanted to put in that much elbow grease, I woulda just washed it & not painted (it’s hard to wash a wall)
  3. if the drips & insects bother you, use some sandpaper
  4. paint what you want & leave the rest (you know, you can always hang up some great material instead of painting, or reed blinds etc. depending on what effect your going for…)
9

Oh, a tip I heard here - unless your floors are dangerous or whatever, paint in your bare feet. That way if you step in paint you’ll know it and not put footprints all over your floors.

10

I’ll add to this as it was a bit of a “duh” moment for me, always have a rag or paper towels to clean up said feet in the painting area. Don’t make the same mistake I did. :smack:

11

I disagree with all the taping. A steady hand and a good cut-in brush works just as well, and you don’t have all that tape to fuss with. There are edging tools with paint pads that also eliminate much of the taping chore.

12

I’ll second this - but add that you still might need to tape the baseboards. A careful hand still doesn’t eliminate gravity-assisted drips from the roller.

13

This is true. I never tape the ceiling I use a piece of thin cardboard (cereal box or back of a pad of paper) in one hand with the brush or roller in the other hand to get a clean line.

14

When brush painting, transfer the paint into a plastic container you can easily hold in your hand, so much easier, and safer if a ladder is involved.

Definitely have a damp cloth in your pocket to fix mistakes, and a roll of paper towel in the room with you.

Don’t have ‘painting’ clothes? Just turn your t shirt inside out, drips or accidents won’t matter.

Bring your portable phone into the room so you don’t have to run for it, if it rings.

Use a broom handle on your roller, rather than a ladder or over stretching.

Never forget: two thin coats, makes a much, much nicer finish that one thick and goopy coat.

Old curtains make great drop sheets.

Be sure to remove all handles, switchplates and knobs first.

When you ‘cut in’ with the brush, before rollering, do more than you think will be required so you don’t accidentally get wall colour on the ceiling, etc.

Bring in extra lights, if you’re painting at night, so you’re not surprised, when the sun shines, to see spots you overlooked.

15

I love my Wagner Paint Mate. It’s a roller with a tube to hold paint. Allows you to paint huge swaths of the wall without refilling.

16

If it were my house, I’d strip at least one door and window to see what was under all the paint. Built in 1934, it could be some really nice wood. If so, I’d strip them all. I like wood. Stripping’s a PITA but it would be well worth it.

As a rental, not so much. Stripping’s a PITA.

I like the idea of “one room at a time”. Keeps it from being so overwhelming!

You can usually clean the paint off of the outlet covers, switchplates, etc, but it’s easier just to replace them. If the landlord won’t spring for replacements, keep the old ones in a box somewhere and you can take yours with you when you move out. This means you can buy really nifty ones if you find some you like, because they’re yours to keep.

To strip all of the glop from your metal door hardware, go to the thrift store and spend a couple dollars on a crockpot and some plastic tongs. Put water and some detergent (laundry or dish) in the crockpot, stir it up a bit, add your hardware. Turn it on low and leave it overnight. The old paint will slide right off. You can Google specific instructions for this if ya wanna.

Buy good paint, it makes everything go so much easier.
Buy quality tools, it makes everything go so much easier. Learn to care for them so you don’t have to replace them very often.
Buy lots & lots of dropcloths. They’re cheap, and it’s much easier to be able to cover everything at once instead of trying to move them around.

I dunno how much stuff I painted with el cheapo brushes & rollers & paint, before my friend the professional made me quit doing that. And I discovered that it really is worth the money for the good stuff.

Learn to cut in (i.e., paint trim, corners, edges, etc. by hand without masking it off). It’s not only way, way faster, it’s actually easier and much more effective than taping once you get the hang of it.

Definitely mask off baseboards. Look for the rolls of tape/paper for baseboards, or tape a strip of dropcloth to the boards as previously suggested.

Oh yeah, if you’re painting a large enough space to need more than one container of the same colour, buy a 5 gallon bucket. Dump all of your cans of paint in and mix like hell before you start painting. This is especially important if you’ve gotten a custom colour. Paint can be slightly different from one can to the next - this will make sure all your paint is actually the same colour. Bonus points if you buy a paint-stirring attachment for your electric drill. :wink:

17

Make that “your variable speed drill” and Bob’s your uncle. This tip brought to you by a previously bespattered and speckled home painter.

18

I saw someone with a nice set-up. He took an old paint bucket, and cut a thin strip from the center of the lid outward. You could then run your drill/brush to the center of the lid, close the lid on the bucket, and spin away without any worry of splatters. (You could also just drill a hole, but you have to attach the brush via brush -> lid -> drill. That’s probably better, because then you don’t lose much integrity of the lid.)

19

If the walls look grimy, wash them with TSP or TSP substitute, use a sponge mop.

Get an adjustable extension handle for the roller. Even when you can easily reach without an extension, it’s much easier on your wrist to have two hands, the adjustible handle will let you work in tighter places. Or, you can get one long fixed and one short fixed handle.

Think about your process, and what steps can be improved to save time. You’ll be repeating these motions 100s of times, shaving 10 or 20 seconds off each pass will add up fast.

20

I wouldn’t strip paint from the doors of a rental house. It is an arduous task, the paint strippers are pretty strong, and you may have to wind up sanding the doors which creates a huge mess. It’s way too much effort for a rental home. That’s the landlord’s problem.

You can buy switch covers and outlet covers for pretty cheap, I think for around $1.00 a pop. It’s less work than trying to strip anything from the outlet covers. As long as the switches and covers you are replacing are standard, you’ll be fine. Don’t throw the old ones out.

Definitely don’t cheap out on the brushes and the rollers. Better brushes have better control and give a better line which means less work in the long run.

Don’t glop on the paint. The first time I painted, I kept trying to do that ad it created dips and runs which I had to fix. Put on a coat, let it dry and then put on another.

Don’t paint the room a dark color. Those require a lot more paint, and for one room I did required four coats to get the color right.Dark colors also make the room feel small. If you have to cover up a dark color, use a good primer. I used Zinsser 1-2-3 to cover up the aforesaid color, Garnet, and it took two coats to make it go away.