Painting: Oh how fun it is…

Well tonight I got up to some painting that I’ve put off for the longest time.  Here is some of my point form tips for painting:

1) Get the right tools: 

Get a step ladder (a 6 foot is a great height for indoors).  I just bought one today at Home Depot for $40 CAD.  Its pretty good too.  If your going out to buy one, make sure it is rated enough for your weight, most step ladders are rated around 200-225 lbs.  Also one that has a paint tray is also KEY.  Whether it’s for a paint can or just to hold your tools, it’s a good idea.  I’ve done so much work without a step ladder and if I would have just bought one sooner I would have saved hours of my time, never mind about the pain in my shoulders and neck I could have saved myself from.

Get good paint brushes.  I usually go for the most expensive one in the store (since I personally don’t know the difference by just looking – generally anyone in a paint store can help you).  A good paint brush doesn’t drip as easy and won’t streak as much.  Once your done painting immediately wash your brushes, if your painting a large area for numerous hours, you might want to want to switch paint brushes half way through and wash the other one… trust me you’ll save yourself time later.  Nothing is worse than trying to scrape paint out of the top of the brush when it gets all crusted on.

Grab a bunch of disposable paint trays.  My mom used to tell me a trick of using the same paint tray by putting a grocery bag overtop of it and pouring the paint on this.  I thought it was a great idea until I used some of those disposable trays.  The trays provide better coverage on the roller, and are just easier to clean up after. 

Grab a bunch of rollers (or whatever you call them).  Again my parents used to reuse them, but they don’t work as nicely the second time, and it takes so long to get all the paint out of those things.  My thought is that painting sucks, and by extending your cleaning time just makes it worse. Ask the store which ones are best.  You will really notice the difference between a cheap roller and a good one.  Also Google the thickness of roller you should use for your application.  Most of my painting I use a 10mm roller.  It gives a paint a bit of a texture so that you won’t notice every little imperfection as much.

Get an extension rod for your paint roller.  I had never used one of these and always used a mini step ladder… boy was I missing out.  With an extension rod you will save so much time, and you won’t find yourself sore after as it saves your from bending down and getting up on a ladder the entire time.

Get a handheld paint tray for when your cutting the corners.  Again just saves you time from bending over to dip your paintbrush in the large paint tray (never mind about saving you from dripping paint all over the floor).

If you don’t have old sheets, get some drop sheets – no need to explain this.  The more the better, as you will drop paint on the ground – it’s Murphy’s Law.

Buy better quality paints.  Some of the brands I would recommend are C2, Benjamin Moore, & Para Paints.  A better quality paint will go on smoother and generally go on with less coats.  They will cost more money but when you are doing more coats you may end up saving.

Get a paint pad edger.  Most big stores will have these.  They do a great job, while they might not exactly get the paint to the ceiling I find you don’t need to.  If you notice in the picture below it doesn’t look bad, and most people won’t even notice it.  It is better to have white paint on the wall, than coloured paint on the ceiling.

2) When putting paint on the roller, after you’re done rolling it a few times through the paint, put the roller on a 45 degree angle and roll on the corners of the roller into the tray.  By doing this you will squeeze out the excess paint on the edges of the roller and will prevent you from putting lines of extra paint on the wall.

3) Don’t rush…  Painting requires a ton of patience.  Your best starting on the hardest parts of the room so you don’t lose your patience by doing it last and doing a crappy job.  If your sick of painting, just stop and leave the next wall for the next day.  The key of my last sentence “leave the next wall for the NEXT day”.  I personally find the hardest part of painting is starting, and I have a bad habit of leaving 1 room half done for a few weeks.  Your spouse will not enjoy this…

4) If painting with a spouse, put on some music.  It’s very boring painting in silence, and if you’re painting for a long time you WILL find something to bicker about.

5) If you accidently paint your ceiling sometimes it doesn’t help to wipe it as you will just make a larger spot.  Once it dries, if you grab a Q-Tip and some rubbing alcohol you can often pull off the paint.  Mind you if you do it too much you will also pull off the white paint on the ceiling.

6) Make sure your walls are clean, wipe them down and make sure ALL glue is off (if you previously had wall paper).  If you don’t get rid of the glue first, you will just have to sand down the glue after you put your primer on.  Also if you find yourself constantly picking things off the roller or off the wall you just painted, it is because you didn’t wipe the walls down enough.

7) If you have cracks in your corners or along the ceiling don’t bother trying to use drywall compound.  It is such a pain to get it smooth, and generally it will just crack again.  Assuming the cracks aren’t too big, use some DAP Alex Plus (Photo Below).  It is a tube of caulking that comes in various colours (white, cream, black, grey, and brown).  You just put a bead of this along the corner and then run your finger down.  It will provide a nice smooth corner, and it won’t crack since it is kind of rubbery.  If you have a popcorn ceiling, I find if your take your finger and rub the corner with your finger and scrape some of the popcorn off.  Then use a DAP Alex Plus in the corner and smooth it out with your finger again.  By doing this you will have a smooth corner from your wall to your popcorn ceiling and it will provide a better line for you to paint across (especially if you are using one of those paint pad edgers).

Here are a few tips on ladders:

1) Wear shoes when your on a ladder. I find my feet kill if I don’t, never mind about the 100’s of times I almost lost my balance – I’m not a great follower of my own tips…

2) Don’t put your ladder on too much of an angle or too steep of an angle – Again I should follow my tips more often.  I can definitely say I had a few scares while painting one of our rooms where it had a high ceiling.

Painting isn’t a cheap thing to do if you do it right.  Expect to spend a couple hundred per room for painting.  Mind you by doing it yourself you save TONS! 

For those of you who want to see what I’ve worked on today I’ve taken a few photos.

You’ll notice along the edge of these beams I didn’t stain to the ceiling.  Instead of driving myself insane from either getting stain on the ceiling or white paint on the beams I’m putting up some cove trim…  A painters dream =)  This will make it look a lot sharper in the end.  Mind you cove trim can date the room a little bit, but the wainscoting in the room uses cove trim so it suits the room.

Here you can see the cove trim.  The closest trim has 2 coats of stain on it.  I almost freaked out when I did the first coat as I thought it should match the wood on the picture above.  Mind you it’s probably a different wood so the stain takes differently. Also this picture below is under florescent light so the colour matches better than it is pictured.

The stain I used was a water based stain called “Saman”.  I used half and half of the colours Walnut (109) and Colonial (205).  I brought in a old piece of trim and the paint store matched it for me.

The next 2 pictures are of a couple walls I did the second coat of primer on.  Like I was mentioning previously, I have a bad habit of leaving something for a few weeks.  One day I primed walls and ceiling for approx 12 hours straight and I couldn’t bring myself to paint again for at least 3 weeks to finish the job.  Like I said in my tips, try to make it enjoyable and don’t try to do it all at once if your getting sick of it. =)

Angela will be happy that her workout room is making progress.   

Another great use of DAP Alex Plus is doing the finishing of your corners after you paint (as long as they carry the right colour for the job).  As you can see below even using one of those paint pad edgers you can still get some nasty edges. 

Just put some blue painters tape on both sides of the corner, make sure you use blue… I don’t know why but everyone says it is much better.  Also make sure you do this approx 1 month after painting.  Paint can take up to 1 month to fully cure, and if it hasn’t cured the tape can peel it off the wall (which would require you to plaster, prime, and re-paint – something I can assure you, you don’t want to do).

Then bead the caulking along the corner.  You should probably have the blue table a little more narrow than this (i just didn’t do a great job painting so I had to make it a little wider).  Then run your finger along the corner.  If you used too much (like I did) you will have a lot of excess caulking all over your finger (but it doesn’t really matter since you put the tape there). 

As soon as your done peel off the tape and the finished result will look amazing!  You’ll notice my brown caulking doesn’t match the wood perfectly but I find it still looks pretty sharp.

In the picture above you can see some spots that don’t look so great.  That is from the caulking before (I made the mistake of caulking before I painted).  If you take your time and do it right it will turn out perfect. 

I’m still learning how to paint, most of my tips come from my 2 Brother in laws, one who is a general contractor, the other who is a know it all DIY’er, and my mom who is an interior designer.

If you have some tips I would love to hear them. I might end up making a page dedicated to painting at some point since obviously there is a lot of tricks to the trade.

Hope you Enjoyed tonight’s post,

Eric