At Seabrook Painting, we realize just how important it is for homeowners to want to make sure their home looks its best both outside and inside. It’s also important that when you decide to paint the inside of your home that you take the proper steps and time to get your home ready for painting.
Importance of Proper Preparation for Interior Painting
It’s extremely important that before you start the job of painting the interior of your home that you take all of the right steps to get the walls and the rooms and items in the rooms are all protected and ready to be painted. You should consider going through each and every room that you plan to paint and notate any areas that might be a problem so that you are prepared for them prior to painting. By taking a few extra minutes to inspect the area you plan on painting is going to save you time, frustration and maybe even money.
Make Sure Your Furniture is Protected
More often than not, too many people often forget about their furniture that’s in the room they plan on painting and this can be a costly mistake. It’s really important to remember that if the room you want to paint is totally empty, you’re going to want to make sure that you find something to cover up any furniture that remains in your room. One thing you can use is painter’s plastic to cover all of your furniture with. When you cover your furniture you could be saving yourself money because you will avoid the possibility of ruining your furniture by having to replace it.
It’s also important to note that if you have items on counters or dressers for example that you either remove the items or at least move them to the middle of the counters or dressers so that the items are not near the walls you’ll be painting.
Remove the Wall Plates
After you’ve taken care of all of your furniture and moving the furniture away from the walls, you’ll be able to get to all of your wall plates. Once you have located all the wall plates it’s a good idea if you remove all of them so that you don’t get paint on them which can end up making it difficult to remove them at a later date and could cause damage to your paint job. You’ll want to remove return and vent covers as well as outlet plates.
Why Is This Important?
Even though you can go ahead and leave these coverings on your walls, what happens when you do, is you can end up with a look that seems really ragged as well as extremely unprofessional looking and this is the last thing you want for your hard work.
Make Sure Floors are Covered
Another important thing you should remember to do is to cover your floors. This is yet another common thing that a lot of people forget to do. You especially want to make sure that you cover carpeted floors, the last thing you want is have a paint spill on your carpet and then end up having to replace your carpet. The best thing to use for covering your floors would be canvas drop cloths. If you are painting only your walls, make sure to cover the floors at least as far out as three feet from the walls. However, if you’re also painting your ceilings then you should cover the entire floor with this canvas. The canvas drop cloths are much easier to use than plastic coverings because they are easy to spread out and the paint is absorbed.
Using Ladders and Scaffolds
If you are painting any wall that goes over a foot above you, you should always consider using a stepladder. If you’re painting a ceiling or any extremely tall walls you’ll need to use a taller ladder and maybe even scaffolding if we’re talking about vaulted ceilings for example.
Wall Repairs
There’s no doubt you’re going to have some wall patching to do prior to painting. It’s important that if you do, make sure that your floors are already covered up. You really don’t want to have to deal with cleaning up any globs of the compound that might fall on to your floor, and you especially don’t want this stuff getting on your carpets. When you do start patching any areas on your walls, make sure that put it on smoothly, and hand sand it down so that it’s nice and smooth so that you can’t tell it’s a patch once you paint it.
Wash Off Surfaces
This step is really important. Before you begin any painting make sure that you wash of all foreign substances that might be on your walls. If you skip this important step you’ll quickly see that your paint is going to have a problem with adhering to the walls properly. Not only that, over time the paint may start to peel off and this will mean you’ll just have to repaint a lot sooner than had you followed this step.
This particular step isn’t really all that hard to do. For instance, if you need to clean off sawdust, dust, or pet hair, all you need to use is a soft microfiber cloth. For things that are tackier such as grease you’ll need to use a solution of dish soap and water plus a little “elbow grease” to get the job done. But it will be worth it in the end.
Prepare the Trim
What’s known as the transition line, the space between the wall and your trim, can actually be a little bit tricky when it comes to making it perfect. This is why we recommend that you use what most pros use, and that’s painters tape. When you run the tape along the trim you’re going to have a nice perfect and smooth line between your trim and wall once you pull the tape off.
Before actually trimming the entire area with the tape we suggest that you pick a practice area and practice taping the trim until you feel relatively comfortable in doing it. After you feel like you’re ready to tape all the trim, you are just about ready to start your painting.
Finally – Make a Test Sample
After you’ve done everything mentioned above you’re just about ready to get started. The final step is to find an area that’s not normally seen, like an area covered by a piece of furniture. Remove the paint can lid and make sure it’s mixed well, if not mix it with a paint stick and then to make sure it’s the color you really want, put a little on a brush and then paint the small patch of wall to see it’s the right color that you expected. If it checks out, you are ready to paint.
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