As many of you are aware from my previous threads on the matter, the Steinhardts are buying a house. We’re going to be closing in January.
We’re going to have some work done in the house before we move in. One of the things that need to be done is that the bedrooms need to be painted. This was a job that I decided that I wanted to do myself.
I’ve never painted a room before. Does anyone have any pointers/suggestions/tips?
Zev Steinhardt
I just painted my first room this weekend!
Tape, lots of tape. We weren’t concerned about the floor (since we were having it replaced as well) but I would guess from the drips and such that tarps would also be really useful.
I’d totally look into Feng Shui before deciding on the color.
But then again, I’m loopy.
What appears to be “tomato soup” can often turn into “screaming tangerine”. Be very afraid…
LIke said before - tape, plenty of tape (and that even won’t prevent leaking)
If you’re going for any teint of red, be prepared to coat and coat and coat…(Red is one of those crappy cover colours - our living room is now hunting coat but started out as fuchsia - took 4 coats including tinted primer)
Make sure your primer gets tinted to your main colour…
Make sure to work as follows;
mentally picture an area of 3 by 3 feet, wet your roller, work in overlapping v or w shapes AND (do not skip this step) finish off by going from top to bottom over the area just painted to smooth out ( we skipped this step in our first coat and it took forever to get rid of the blotchiness)
And most importantly - take your time…never paint in a hurry to get it over with
Now I don’t care if you seen other posts of mine and think I’m a dickhead this one is the real thing.
I bought an old place and over the years repainted it all. Some places even with the most assiduous preparation the paint would soon begin to flake. After many years the wife and I felt wealthy and engaged a professional to do some much needing painting. By luck I was on days off and helped/hindred him while chatting away. He did something contrary to all the instructions I’d ever seen and I asked him why.
He explained that you can’t patch on to a crappy surface. Do not patch the walls first. Put on the undercoat and a couple of days later patch the walls and undercoat the patches. Then paint the suckers.
Well now I paint over the old tired paint and my paint stays there.
If you use tape get it off within 24 hours.
If you have a wife who prefers really good to so-so, check out books of painting effects. Things like rolling on and rolling off make paint work look 500% better for 50% more effort. My wife made some of our walls look like parchment paper. Very cool, even the builders commented on it and she’d learned it all from a book from the library.
What a slacker I am. Here are examples of the paint effects possible. Remember it may take another day of painting but you’ll be looking at it for years.
If you have “orange peel” textured walls have a box of tissue handy. No amount of tape will help and you’ll be crying with frustration, especially if you have any sort of design or contrast area taped out. It’s especially impossible to get a decent line between the wall and ceiling, and in one room I resorted to the quasi-tacky “Trading Spaces” solution of running cording around the room to cover the line. I actually like it but my husband loathes it.
If you’re painting the ceiling, paint it first. That way any drips that get on the wall and that you don’t notice or can’t get off will be covered by the new color.
Floors, if they’re being redone, get done last, after the paint is well dry. If they’re not, cover them well, with a couple of tarps set up so they overlap. They’ll shift, and if there are two, you’re more likely not to get a bare spot (which will be exactly where you drop the paint brush or spill the paint).
ROLLERS where possible
Thank you folks. Keep the tips coming.
We were looking at effects such as rolling on/off (or ragging on/off) for some rooms. I bought Home Depot’s Decorative Painting 1-2-3 book, which had some good information in it on the subject.
Zev Steinhardt
I just painted a bedroom about a month ago. I painted the ceiling first, so that seems like a good idea. Someone had cautioned me against using any tape, on the fact that you will get a build up (ridge) where the edge of the tape is, so I skipped taping. Where the ceiling meets the walls I just did it very carefully with a brush - an angled brush seemed to work better than one with straight bristles.
I took all baseboard, door, window and closet trim off and painted them separately. I also primed the walls first. Tarps are a must, I also got some thin plastic strips with a flange to put down where the carpet meets the wall (cheap, I got them at Home Depot), then I tucked the tarps (drop cloths) up under the strip. I am really glad I used these strips, the majority of drips landed on them, not the carpet.
I used a pad, not a roller, for the walls. That was simply because I was more used to a pad, and I felt I could control it better. I would just stick the pad in a zip lock bag overnight instead of cleaning it daily.
I had taken all the furniture out except the bed, those magic slider things really do work well. I could push the bed anywhere in the room by myself.
The hard part really is the prepping, that took days, the actual painting only took a few hours.
Good one I forgot that. Any painting implement - roller, brush, pad, whatever will be good tomorrow if you stick it in the fridge today. This is really good to know because when you are about to rip each others throats out at 6PM you can just go …kiss,kiss sorry about that, stick everything (including roller trays and paint containers) into bags and refrigerate, order Chinese and watch a DVD by candlelight.
my parents did their bathroom in textured wall paper than painted over it and it looks real nice
My wife and I have painted many many rooms. We work out to be a very good team, as she is better at edging, and I am better at the rolling. But I know nothing about effects, stencilling, etc.
Painting is one of my favorite home jobs, because few other jobs show such dramatic results so quickly, easily, and cheaply.
Prep takes as much time as the actual painting, and is incredibly important. Make sure the walls are clean. Wipe them down with a dry rag, and wash them with plain water. Use a primer like Killz to cover stains, adhesives, etc.
There really is no need for tape. Simply be careful, take your time, and feather your brush.
I personally feel it looks better it you brush the edges first, and then roll. But my dad always argued that you should roll first, and then edge, because you can really get very close to the edges and, therefore, will have to do a smaller area with brush - which of course, is slower.
The more light the better. I have an old floor lamp with 5 bulbs and no shade that I use while painting.
Buy good paint. It is worth the price, both in ease of application, and durability. If you believe more than one coat will be needed - say if you are painting a light color over dark - use a tinted primer first. Primer is much cheaper than paint.
The colors generally tend to show more color on the walls, than on the paint chips. If you get below the 2d or 3d hue on a pain chip, it is going to look pretty dark on the walls. Not to say you shouldn’t use dark hues if that is your choice. But it is generally easier to paint a darker color over light, than vice versa.
If you are uncertain, you can buy a pint or a quart of a color, and slap it up on the walls. Or paint big pieces of cardboard/plywood, and move them around the room at various parts of the day. The same paint can look very different on adjoining walls, and in different daylights or artificial light. We used a mustardy tan - called something or another sand - in our family room. In most lights it was really lovely. Yet under some conditions, it was really mustard yellow. We repainted it with a tan which was the same value, but on a brown instead of yellow base. Most of the time it looks identical to the first color. But it never looks yellow like the other occasionally did.
Bring your pillows, curtains, etc to the paint store. It is easier to find paint to match a bedspread, that the other way around.
For most living rooms, I prefer an eggshell or satin finish. Gloss/semi-gloss is pretty much only for kitchens and baths.
Consider going with a maker’s “themed” collection. Such as one of the Benjamin Moore historical collections. The rooms of your house will flow more seamlessly than if you just mix and match from a variety of palettes.
My personal preference tends towards white, or lighter, ceilings. I think it makes the rooms look larger.
Paint the closets while you are at it. You will be glad you did, and if you don’t do it right away, you never will get around to it later. A clean white closet appears much brighter.
Roll slowly. It greatly cuts down on the splatters.
Perhaps most importantly, don’t crack the first beer until you are done painting and beginning to clean up. 
Cracks in plaster walls can’t just be filled-in (they’ll recrack in no time) or covered-over (you’ll leave a noticeable bulge) with spackle.
Get yourself an old fashioned can opener – the kind that punctures a trianglular hole on the top of a tin can (a “church key,” they’re called) – and “plow” it several times along the length of the crack. Really dig it in! The idea is to gouge out a V-shaped furrow with the crack running roughly along the bottom; the furrow should be approximately 3/8" or 1/2" deep. Now you can fill it with spackle (maybe a couple of times if it shrinks between applications) and sand it perfectly smooth to the wall. Prime and paint. You will be stunned how the crack has utterly disappeared. And unless your wall has serious and ongoing settling/shifting problems, the crack will never reappear.
Good luck. (BTW, I hate painting.)
Any oldsters out there agree with me that one-step quick drying spackle is perhaps the greatest invention ever?
“Beware of the Cog”
I was so excited that I might get the opportunity to share my “professional” opinion, but everything has pretty much been covered.
Let’s see…if you have a dark color paint or a drastic change, you know you’ll probably need several coats. Don’t try to just roll it on thick. And when you’re working on trim, do the base last because you may get trash in the paint that you don’t want to pick out of your nice door trim.
Also, you may not need to retape for the second coat if your first cut-in went good. You can just follow the line you made the first time, maybe just a tiny bit down.
One more thing. If you Kilz…for God’s sake use ventilation.
I can’t stand painting, but have slowly learned to tolerate the process. Everything above sounds about right, I’ll second the trim first, roll second idea, too.
As far as all those swoopty cool texturizing effects? Had one hella frustrating time trying to master something called ragging a few years ago, and then discovered Wall Magic! I adore this system. I’ve done three rooms with it and they look great. With the divided tray and roller, you cover the walls once instead of two or three or even four separate passes, and wind up buying much less paint, as well. You control the marbling/mottling effect by choosing colors that are complementary or contrasting. I did one room with a big contrast, a warm medium brown and very light french vanilla, and another room with a deep burgandy and a dark brown, the first looks marbled but the second blended so well together it looks like the solid brick color I was hoping for. I can’t use a straight roller without leaving roller marks to save my life, but the split roller is meant to be applied every whicha way and solves that for me.
Not to sound too Trading Spacey but really, don’t be afraid of color. The room I’ve received the most compliments on is my sons room, brilliant white semi-gloss walls with a very dark blue (almost navy) ceiling. He wanted a dark color, but it would have made his room look like a tiny little box using something like that on the walls. This way it’s dramatic like he wanted, with the bonus of the dark ceiling reflecting the light to put sort of a color cast of the same hue onto the walls when the overhead fixture’s on.