twitter
    Find out what I'm doing, Follow Me :)

Wednesday 6 August 2014

Painting Tips

Doing Renovations in the house I thought I should share some things that I have picked up over time and have helped me. These tips will save you time and money when you start your painting project. I believe in the saying "Buy Once, Buy It For Life". Buy something good, that will give you good results and that has a good life even though it is a bit expensive.

Buy Good Quality Paint
Why pay $40 a gallon when you can buy paint for $15 a gallon. It really does make a difference when you use good paint. You can get the same job done in half the amount of time because the better paint will require less coats and give a better finish. But i wouldn't go for the really high end paint though because you'll end up paying $15-$20 more per gallon but no matter how good the paint is or how the manufacturer claims it to be a one-coat paint, I've always ended up doing 2 coats.

Buy Good Quality Rollers and Paint Brush
Always buy good quality Roller and Paint Brush and wash it when you are finished with the Paint Job.
Hot Tip: Between drying times you can wrap your roller or brush in a plastic bag to make it air tight. This will stop the brush from going hard and you can easily reuse it after.

Wall Filler
I really like the Drydex stuff. It is pink when you put it on and goes white when it dries.



Hot Tip: Always apply a very thin layer of wall filler, Keep on Sanding in Filling until surface is flat. This way you don't have to sand too much and finished result is amazing.

Sanding Blocks
These come in really handy. Remember when sanding the smaller the number the sanding block comes in, coarser the sand paper and coarser the finish you will get. You only use coarser sanding block when you have a lot of sanding to do but always do your final sanding with a finishing sanding block to give a nice finish. 



Patching Walls
There are a few ways of patching holes in walls. If The Drywall is just cracked you can just apply a lot of mud (also known as drywall compound) until surface is flat. You can buy a big ready-made mud for around $20-$25.



You can also buy patches and stick them on then use drywall compound over it. Again Remember to apply thin layers, sand and then keep filling until surface is flat. If the patch is big use a finishing trowel to feather out the filled area with the surrounding walls where the hole is so the actual hole immerses into the wall around it and becomes completely unnoticeable.



Masking Tape
Buying good masking tape can also make a big difference. I normally get the blue masking tape now. Its worth it in the end though. If you have just painted a wall and you want to do accent wall or paint ceiling etc you might want to get Frog Tape. The thing is if you have recently painted a wall and put the blue tape on to separate walls so you can paint, when you start to remove the blue tape it takes off the paint on the freshly painted surface. The frog tape has special adhesive that doesn't do that.



No comments:

Post a Comment