This scenario begins with buying a new home in need of a little work or with living in a current home for a while and knowing there are some walls not looking as good as they looked years before. There are scrapes, holes and strange stains populating your interior walls and you have finally decided to take some action. With painting, there are many techniques used by professionals, such as MSNW’s maintenance crew, that you can use as well. Once you have some basic skills mastered you will be able to paint any wall you desire. 

First Potential Mistake: Not Prepping Surfaces. 

The first step to painting is not painting. There is as much or more prep work than there is painting. This includes cleaning surfaces, putting down protective floor coverings, filling holes, sanding over dried putty and taping. 

Cleaning. 

Damp rags are typically the best way to clean a pre-painted surface to remove dirt and grime. Skipping this step causes paint to stick to the dirt on the wall rather than the wall itself. The work is quick and well worth the small effort for later when you are painting and the paint sticks to the wall, rather than the dirt from the wall getting on your roller or paintbrush and then infiltrating your paint supply. Make sure to clean any area you plan to put painter’s tape on, including the baseboards.  

Covering your floors. 

Paint splatters. It gets everywhere, even if you are not dripping any paint. Rollers cause splattering, so even though they are efficient in getting paint on the walls quickly and easily, they do not keep the paint wholly concentrated in one place.  

You can cover your floors with painter’s plastic from your local hardware store, which typically comes in rolls. You can also use a system that dispenses paper and painter’s tape at the same time to be taped onto baseboards. You can use them both in conjunction together by putting the painter’s plastic or some paper on the ground as well. Drop cloths can also be useful if you would prefer that method, and they are more durable. You might not like the feeling of walking on plastic and prefer to go the paper route. You might not like having a heavy drop cloth to store and keep around if you are not painting too often.  

Filling Holes. 

Once you have protected your floors you can move on to patching holes with painter’s putty. Although spackling works to fill holes as well, it can leave a bump on the wall and not look as finished. Use a putty knife or a 5-in-1 (which is also helpful for opening paint cans and scraping paint off of your roller to preserve excess paint) to push the putty into the hole and scrape the excess putty off so the wall is near flat but there is not a concave. Make sure that the entire hole is filled as paint does not help to fill in holes at all.  

Let dry, and then use a bit of sandpaper to scratch the surface, so that paint adheres easier to the dried putty. You can also use sandpaper to make your putty work a bit cleaner and more flattened to the wall. You might notice dried putty falling to the ground which is why you want to put plastic down on the ground before starting. 

Taping. 

Although tedious, you will thank yourself later for giving yourself a failsafe. When you paint over the edges you will not be constantly cleaning up after yourself or leaving obvious paint blotches in all the wrong places. 

The most important place to use painter’s tape is over the baseboards, and if you used the tape and paper method then you are good to go there. Then you will want to tape the edges of any obstructions that you encounter on the walls. This includes doors, windows and cabinets. Remove any wall plates with a flathead screwdriver. You can cover the outlets completely with tape, so paint does not drip and get inside. 

Taping the ceiling is an option, but it can be a lot of extra work and since paint is not dripping upward is not as necessary. 

Finally, Painting. 

You might be tempted to merely paint over problem areas or patches, but it is better to paint entire walls so as to not bring attention to the fixes you are making. Spot painting brings attention to itself which is the exact opposite effect desired. Plan to paint wall-by-wall. 

Cutting In. 

You can use a paintbrush or an edger if using a paintbrush seems too challenging. An edger is basically a flat tool that gets the wall edges without going over and does not require as much skill as a paintbrush. 

Using a paintbrush, however, can be more efficient once you learn how to do it, and it can be quite satisfying. In order to use a paintbrush, start by holding it like a pencil and dipping it in the paint to cover the first inch of the brush. Start on the ceiling and work your way down to the baseboards by feathering the edge of the brush to the crevices of the walls 

It might help to watch a video tutorial on this. This is the detail work, which is why it is important to use a good quality brush. Use the paintbrush to paint about four inches away from the edges of the wall and other obstructions. 

Rolling. 

Tip: Buy a roller that is designed for the surface you are painting on. 

Pour the paint after stirring it, into the paint tray and cover your roller with paint while attempting to not spill over the edges of the roller onto the sides. This will help prevent excess paint drippage. You can achieve this by dipping the roller in the paint lightly and pushing it a bit at the same time to turn it, to then dip and turn again until the roller is full of paint, but the sides are clean. 

If you have an extension handle, use your roller to make a vertical line from top to bottom of the wall and move horizontally by rolling over the painted edge so it is smooth. Do not stop until the wall is complete, or the paint will dry and leave lines. If you do not have an extension handle, paint six-by-six-foot squares on the wall, combining them together by painting over lines to create smooth transitions as you are on the ground and on a ladder. 

Remove the tape. 

Remember to remove the tape immediately while the paint is still wet. Otherwise, the paint edges may rip off with the tape. Painting takes some skill but once you know what to do, have some practice and know how to achieve the results you want, you can continue to use this skill throughout your life.