Interior painting tips

So, it is time to break out the rollers and paint chips. There’s a thousand and one reasons that might cause you to need to paint or repaint some of the walls in your house. Maybe you just moved in and the color of the walls are not quite to your liking. Maybe you're tired of your old colors or want to add an accent wall. Maybe, you’re just covering up some old water damage. Either way it’s time to paint. Here are some tips that I hope will keep this process from being a chore.

Do your prep! We’re not off to a good start. Prep work, as essential as it is, is undeniably a chore. You just want to get the process done but you’re stuck with a bunch of extra steps. Hopefully doing this prep work will save you time in the long run by eliminating the cause of unnecessary problems that you’d have to struggle to fix later. First, patch up any holes. The look of any holes will be exacerbated by painting. Remember to sand the spots you’ve filled

in so that it matches the rest of the wall. Not sanding will also make the damaged spots stand out more.  

Next, clean your walls.  Just a quick once over will do. Run over the walls with a broom and then a quickly rub down the walls with a microfiber cloth to get rid of the last of the dirt. Having clean walls prepares the surface for painting and prevents premature peeling. Finally, primer, Primer, PRIMER! The step everyone wants to skip. You may want to take another sitting just to do this. You could get a two-in-one paint and see how that works out for you (I’m not a paint expert you tell me). Either way primer is a must if you’re looking for longevity, it makes the color of the new paint color show up better. This is especially true if your covering up a darker color. Primer just generally makes the whole thing look nicer.

Trim! You’re going to want to use as few paint strokes as possible when going over the trim. The fewer strokes you can use while painting trim the smoother the end result will look.  Load up the brush with paint to avoid skips in paint that you’d have to go back over and use long strokes. Overlap the previous stroke a little to avoid missed spots that you’d have to go back over with shorter stokes.

Brushes

To keep brushes from going dry when you need to walk away by using ziplock bags or plastic wrap. Plastic will hold in the moisture for several hours if you need to walk away. If your using a ziplock, cut a whole in the bottom, open the bag put the brush in handle first through the while you made, and zip it up.  

In order to keep brushes prepared between coats of paint you can keep your brushes, handle up in water. This keeps your brushes from getting hard and while cleaning off the excess paint from the brushes. I wouldn’t suggest you mix colors.