3 Quick Painting Tips For Kitchen Or Bathroom Remodeling Projects

10 December 2015
 Categories: , Blog

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A kitchen or bathroom remodeling project can involve a lot of time, meetings with contractors, and decisions about how much of the work you will take on yourself. Painting the walls is one step that you can take on to lower your overall remodeling costs and to simply get more practice at painting. If you don't have a lot of painting experience or consider yourself too impatient, there are a few painting tips to make the process quicker and easier.

Prep the Area: TSP Cleaner and Drop Cloths

Prep work can often take more time than painting if you go overboard by applying painter's tape to every surface. The only slightly time consuming step you need to take ahead of painting is to clean the walls thoroughly so that any grease, soap scum, or other buildups won't cause the paint to apply unevenly. You can clean the walls using a diluted trisodium phosphate cleaner, which is sold at most hardware stores. You can clean the walls a day or two ahead of the painting to let the walls fully dry and to save you some time on paint day.

Instead of taping off the ceilings, trim, and every accent between, you can simplify the process by putting a drop cloth down on the floor. Tape the drop cloth to the floor so it doesn't shift as you walk on it. If your walls have narrow chair rails or some other mid-wall accent that can be dripped on, you can go ahead and tape that off but don't worry too much about precision at this point.

Collect Your Paint Supplies: Smooth Roller, Angled Brush, and Paint Tray

Selecting high quality brushes is one of the most important steps of the painting process. Pay more for the roller brushes that have the smoothest surface so that you don't make streaks or textured patterns while you are painting. You also want a small angled brush with fairly dense bristles. The angled brush is going to take care of your trim work without the need for painter's tape.

Finally, set up your paint tray for the best results possible. Use a paint strainer, which is available at most hardware stores, to filter paint into the painter's tray. The strainer will remove any clumps or blobs that could end up stuck to your wall.

If you are working on an especially large room, pour about how much paint you expect to use into an empty, clean paint can. Add in a liquid paint extender according to package directions to keep the wetness of the paint the same from the beginning to the end of the project.

Plan Your Attack: Bottom Down, One Wall at a Time

Now it is finally time to paint. If you're doing the ceilings, too, you want to do the ceilings and upper trim first, then the walls, and then the lower trim. You won't have to worry about small drips because you will paint the lower area next anyway.

Only painting the walls and trim? Work on one wall at a time rather than going to each wall to paint along the trim, then coming back to paint the center of the wall.

Roll paint upwards, then move straight down to smooth out any potential lumps, then move to the next section of wall and repeat the process. Don't worry about leaving gaps around the trim. Once the center section of your first wall is covered, go back in with the angled brush to cut in along the trim with a more precise hand.

If you get paint on the stove, bathtub, or sink, simply wipe the paint off quickly with a damp rag and keep on painting. To learn more, contact a business like Koontz Hardware.