A fresh lick of paint is perhaps one of the easiest ways to dramatically enhance a room aesthetic’s appeal. There are countless choices when it comes to colours and combinations. It’s on the top of the list of potential home makeover projects that you can quickly pull off on a weekend and with a relatively minimal cost too.
If you’re itching to do your take on your first ever DIY painting project, this article is for you. Check out practical painting tips for results that look like it’s been done by a pro. Let’s delve right in!
1. Clean Your Wall with a Degreaser
The first step to painting any room would be cleaning and prepping as paint will not adhere to greasy and dirty surfaces. This is particularly important if you are planning to tackle your grime-magnet surfaces, such as your kitchen walls above the stove or the mudroom where people kick off their muddy boots with gusto.
The first painting tip experts recommend is using a degreaser to clean problematic surfaces faster with less effort scrubbing. When doing this on your own, be sure to protect your eyes and hands with goggles and rubber gloves.
2. Go for Quality Over Quantity
It might be tempting to purchase cheaper paint and brushes to save on cash, but in reality, you will realize in the end that it is going to compromise the quality of the results and your overall painting experience. Frequently, these low-cost brushes would be a hassle because the bristles would be too stiff or start to fall out, hindering you from getting the outcome you desire. Instead of wasting your money on one-time uses brushes, a painting tip most expert painters suggest is buying a good-quality angled brush, which is versatile enough and that would last a long time to use on future painting projects.
On the other hand, the pros reveal that cheap paint buckets are actually a scam. They offer poor coverage and tend to have a different hue when they dry. It means that you’ll probably be buying more cans to get several coats of paint on a wall or scrap the whole project and do it all over again because you don’t like how it turned out.
3. Sand Surfaces
To achieve a smooth and flawless painting finish, professional painters take sanding away imperfections seriously. They say this really takes more time than the actual painting but they do it because the results are absolutely worth it. Sanding evens out the surfaces, scrapes away the rough edges on the trims, and even flattens the ridges around nails. Use a fine-grit sanding paper to prep the walls from the baseboard to the ceiling.
4. Use a Tinted Primer
Professional painters use joint compound to fill in the holes and patch cracks within a concrete wall. Before painting, they prime the walls because painting over it immediately would result in “flashing,” where the joint compound absorbs the moisture off tha paint and gives the patched areas standout unpleasantly from the rest of the surface.
Now here’s a secret painting tip to remedy this specific situation. To prevent this from occurring, it’s important to prime your walls first. Instead of using a white-based primer, use one that’s closest to the finishing paint you are going to use. It’s going to do a better job covering the patches and existing color. It will also make your painted wall more vivid without needing too many coats of paint.
5. Prep and Protect
Another essential painting tip that you should never take for granted would be preparing your work area and protecting furniture and floor surfaces from the inevitable paint spills and splatters.
When painting an entire wall of a room, it’s best if you can move out all furniture items before starting to paint. For exceptionally heavy or permanently installed pieces that would be impossible to move, cover with a canvas drop cloth or a lightweight plastic sheet to protect them for possible damages. Do the same for your carpeted or hardwood floors. You can also use painter’s tape to seal off corners, base and crown moldings, and window casings. Remove outlet and light switch covers or apply painter’s tape to cover them from paint drippings.
6. The Boxing Method
If you are going to paint a large wall, you are going to need several cans of paint to cover the whole area. To get a consistent color, the pros recommend doing the boxing method, which involves mixing cans of paint together in a big bucket. This will ensure that you will achieve the same tint of color throughout the room. Don’t worry about spoiling paint. Leftovers can always be transferred back into their original containers.
7. Don’t Tape Glass Windows
If you are planning to paint your window frames or sashes for a refresh, experts say taping and covering the glass portion is only a waste of time. Instead, a painting tip they suggest is to scrape off the dried paint with a razor blade, which can peel off easily, once you’re done repainting your windows. However, be careful not to remove the caulking between your wood or vinyl windows and the glass part, which locks in heat and seals off moisture.
Continue reading our blogs for more DIY painting tips and home makeover hacks from Clera. To request a free home estimate, please contact us today!