A coat of paint presents the quickest and easiest way to give a room a face lift. It breathes life into a property and you can create dramatic rooms or just add a subtle hint of colour. The most popular form of paint work lies in interior painting; whether you are painting your ceiling, walls, or woodwork, it is all classed as interior painting and when done right can provide you with a finish that is professional and skilled. There are a number of aspects that you need to do to ensure that your interior painting ends up looking professional; you need to thoroughly prepare the walls. Your walls should be clean, dry and smooth before you even contemplate putting a coat of paint on them.
Preparing a room to paint will take at least half a day so ensure that you leave yourself adequate time to do this. The tasks that you will be performing on the day is removing any flaking paint or if the walls currently have wallpaper you will have to scrap the wallpaper off. Once the wallpaper or flaking paint has been removed as best as you can you should smooth over the walls using a sanding block in order to create the smoothest finish that you can. When you have smoothed your walls you may notice cracks or small holes have appeared in the plaster on your walls, if this is the case you will now have to fill these in. You need to ensure that the filler is completely dry before you start your paint job.
When you have finished preparing your walls you should examine the current state of your walls to decide if you need to use lining paper before you start painting. If your walls show signs of large repair patches or a mass of hairline cracks then it is advised that you cover the walls with lining paper as it will give you a smooth, even base for your paint work. You should hang the lining paper in exactly the same way that you would hang normal wallpaper and then leave it overnight to thoroughly dry.
As well as ensuring that your walls are free from cracks and holes it is also important that you take care of any cracks that appear in your skirting board as these would ruin the finish of your room. Any gaps or cracks in your skirting board should be filled with decorator’s sealant.
Now that your walls and skirting board are prepared it is important that you have ventilation in the room that you are going to painted. Although many paints that are now out claim to be odour free they still carry some fumes, which is why you should open any doors and windows. You also need to move all of your furniture to the centre of your room and cover them with dust sheets.
You are now ready to start painting so grab your brushes and rollers and crack your paint tin open. Helen is the web master of ARCH Building Solutions, specialists in all aspects of Interior Painting.
