One of the most accessible ways to make noticeable changes in your apartment or give it a “facelift” is by painting. Fortunately, it’s also one of the tasks that with a little effort and attention, you can do yourself and save some money
All you mainly need is goodwill and patience, and here we provide you with some useful tips so that your apartment looks like it was painted by a professional from the get-go. Typically, well-maintained apartments require the least amount of work.
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Neglected apartments with greasy walls full of damage can often be an insurmountable obstacle for an inexperienced worker. Assess the situation carefully and consider what you have more of, free time or money.
Organization is Key…
If you’re painting the entire apartment, it’s essential to plan the entire job thoroughly. As a rule, paint one room at a time and try to keep the entire job localized to just one room at a time. If the work “spreads” throughout the entire apartment, chaos ensues. First, you need to clear all the walls, which is easiest by moving the furniture towards the center of the room. If there are any chests of drawers with drawers, turn them around before starting work so that they are accessible for opening.
When the furniture is concentrated in the middle of the room, passage along the walls is comfortable, and it’s easier to cover the furniture when all the elements are in one place. For this purpose, plastic sheets or old sheets can be useful if you have them.
Pay attention, the distance from the wall to the moved furniture must be sufficient not only for your passage but also for maneuvering with the paint roller handle. Before starting, try “dry” if you can reach all parts of the room with the roller. Painting always starts from the ceiling, so make sure you can reach all parts of the ceiling from the accumulated items. It’s good to have everything prepared before starting. If you start preparing when painting has already begun, you will create unnecessary breaks, and rollers and brushes will dry out, leading to problems.
Good Preparation is Half the Job
The amount of work doesn’t depend solely on the square footage, as it’s easier to repaint 20 square meters of a flat wall than deal with ten square meters full of details, edges, corners… The reason is that most of the work actually comes down to preparation. Auto painters usually say that quality preparation for painting is 80 percent of the job, and the same goes for painting.
Floors can be protected with plastic sheets or old newspapers, with overlapping, but for this purpose, rolled-up thin plastic with already attached adhesive tape is much more efficient. It simply unwinds on the floor, and the tape sticks to the skirting board, right next to the wall edge. After completing the work, when you remove this plastic, a miracle will happen because behind you, the room will be perfectly clean. Door and window frames should also be protected with adhesive tape. Pay attention to details! Remove visible electrical outlets and light switches.
You don’t have to remove them completely, just take off the plastic cover, which you’ll put back after painting. This is a much neater solution than taping the switch with adhesive tape. If you tape the switch, excess paint may accumulate around the switch during painting. If there are no switch covers, brush strokes will be continuous, and the result perfect. You don’t have to remove the less visible outlets; you can protect them with tape.
Repair Wall Damage
When the sole purpose of painting is refreshment or a color change, there is less work. However, it is often necessary to repair numerous damages. Holes and unevenness on the walls are leveled with puttying, and this is the part where most novice painters give up and hire professionals. If it’s necessary to putty entire walls, it’s questionable if it’s feasible.
A well-trained hand is needed for quality puttying; otherwise, the results will not be nearly as good. But repairing minor damages is an easier job. Mix the putty according to the instructions on the packaging. A small amount can be mixed by hand, and for larger quantities, a mixer is used that attaches to the head of a hand-held electric drill. If it says to wait 15 minutes after making the mixture, do so because that’s the time needed to create the right consistency.
Before starting work, the mixture is stirred again. Too thin putty is not good because the thicker layer will drip and deform under the action of gravity. After puttying, it is necessary to sand the surfaces with a finer sandpaper to remove minor irregularities and traces from the edge of the putty knife.
No Tools, No Craft
For painting alone, you’ll basically need one large roller, one small roller, and a brush. That’s all; having more tools will only cause you problems because you’ll have more to clean up when the work is finished. Also, during the work itself, if you have too many brushes and rollers, the paint will dry on them, which is not good at all. If you take a lunch break, for example, let the roller stay immersed in paint, and cover the bucket with cling film used for the freezer, so the paint doesn’t dry out. The same applies to the small roller and brush in the paint container.
Clean the tools only when finishing the job for the day. If possible, wash them outside, and if not, you can wash the roller in the bathtub. Use plenty of water and rinse it thoroughly so that it doesn’t harden tomorrow. When buying tools, you don’t have to buy the cheapest products. They’re not expensive tools, and the last thing you want is to constantly remove hairs from the wall due to poor quality brushes and repair those areas.
No Need to Panic
Painting should always start from the ceiling, and move to the walls only when the ceiling is done. When you first roll the roller, nothing will happen that you’ll like. The first coat will be absolutely terrible. Everything will be colorful, blotchy, but – don’t panic. The first coat of paint is always like that, especially until it dries well. Also, painting, for example, a burgundy or blue wall in white can be a significant challenge, but it’s all possible.
When the paint dries well and you repaint the walls the second time, it will be a bit easier because the color will start to even out. Try to cover as much surface as possible with a large roller. Use the small roller for the area around electrical switches and behind radiators, and use the brush to “draw” lines around windows and doors.
Over time, you’ll gauge for yourself how much paint in the roller achieves the best results, or how much you need to squeeze out of the roller. In bank commercials for cash loans, when smiling people are fixing up their apartment, roller strokes on the walls usually go in all directions, left, right, up, down. Paint splatters everywhere, and everyone’s laughing… In reality, the procedure is always different from the movies and commercials.
First, a small roller horizontally pulls out a stripe just below the ceiling and in the same way at the bottom, above the parquet skirting board. Then, the entire wall is painted with vertical movements of the large roller, in order until a circle is made through the entire room. Of course, before that, you’ve finished painting the ceiling.
Foto: Freepik