Are Your Home and Walls Ready for an Interior Painting?
If you are someone who prefers not to take the headache of DIY painting at your home, we assume you might have already started searching for a professional painter or home service provider in the city. You are lucky if you are in Singapore and are still searching because you have Sendhelper here! However, finding a contractor or a home servicing company is just the first step towards completing the painting.
There will be preparations you have to do at your home and to the walls to make it easy for whoever is doing it. Though we would suggest booking the service of a professional home service provider in Singapore, we thought of discussing how to prepare both your home and walls for painting.
Steps to Ensure a Smooth Painting Process
Move or Cover the Furniture
Start by removing small hard furnishings like coffee tables, light stands and more. It won’t be practical to remove every large piece of furniture at your place such as the sofas, chairs, dining tables, beds and suites. You can house them in a large room or any other safe storage space in the meantime.
If you do not have a room like that, you can also move them to the centre of the room. Doing this way will let the painter have enough space to move around. They can also do the painting without causing any damage. Do not forget to cover the furniture with either a large cloth or an old sheet.
Take Away the Electronics and Appliances
Just like how you take care of all the furniture, you should also move or cover all the electronics at your home. It includes your television, gaming system, refrigerator, sound system, stove, and other kitchen appliances. These expensive items can get damaged when the crew who come in to paint try to remove them in hurry. Do not worry if you don't have enough materials to cover everything before painting. The professionals from home servicing companies will mostly bring drop cloths to cover stuff like these.
One thing you should keep in mind is that paint is likely to splatter even when everything is covered. For instance, think of the time while painting your ceiling. Therefore, what we would recommend as the best solution is to move these appliances to another room.
Wall Hangings and Show Pieces
Wall hangings and showpieces will cause trouble for painters while painting the walls. Remove all the frames, clocks, candle holders, and other decorative showpieces without a hurry. Wrap them in bubble wrap to protect them from breaking. You can then keep them in marked cartons or storage boxes. You might sometimes feel like piling these objects in the corner of your rooms and covering them under one of the large pieces of furniture. But there are chances for the paint to splash onto these objects and spoil them. Therefore, it is always wise to relocate them to another room.
Take Care of Upholstery and Soft Furnishings
You should remove upholstered furniture and other soft furnishings such as carpets and rugs from the room. Store them in another room safely. Also, don’t forget to remove window treatments like drapes, curtains, and blinds. You can roll up the mats and rugs and cover them for extra protection. Do not skip this step even when you are not painting the ceiling. The more items you clear from the room that you or the painter is painting, the more the chance for those items to stay in perfect condition.
Move all the Knick-Knacks
There is a chance for you to miss smaller items while you are worried about moving big objects like furniture and electronics. However, removing knick-knacks from the painting area is also crucial for smooth work. Take away decorative pieces and mementoes on display at your home before painting. Small objects will otherwise get knocked off shelves and other areas, and they can get damaged in the process. Therefore, store them somewhere safe before the painters arrive. You can put them back when all the painting and cleaning are over.
Vacate the Rooms
Restrict the time you spend in your home while painting the room. You may also need to completely vacate the rooms or even the house in some cases. It is applicable when the rooms are small. Therefore, plan well and take all the essential things with you before you vacate. You might otherwise have difficulty when you try to access them after the painting starts.
Always prevent kids and pets from going to the space when the painting is going on. A good idea might be to spend some time at a relative’s place, especially if the painting is being taken care of by Sendhelper. You can even go on a mini-vacation as there will be nothing much to worry about when professionals do their job. You will not also have to deal with inhaling the toxic fumes of the paint.
How to Prepare Your Walls for Interior Painting?
Now that we discussed what to do to prepare your home before painting, we like to move on to the most crucial part of the prep- prepping walls!
Preparation of walls is key to successful painting and flawless results. Here are the most important things you have to tick off to get your walls ready for the new paint.
Clean the Walls Properly
The first thing to keep in mind is that you cannot paint over any flaws that are on the walls. The walls of your home are most likely to have dirt, grit, watermarks, cracks, and more flaws. You will have to deal with all of these and resolve them before applying paint. It might not be common to wash the majority of walls before painting, but it is necessary in some cases.
You should also cleanse the walls using dish soap and water to correct these problems. Make sure to wipe the walls using water after cleaning them with dish soap. It will help remove the residues of the soap. Use a solution made of half a cup of water and a quartz of bleach to treat mould on walls.
Now, Inspect Your Walls
Repair the walls thoroughly before painting to ensure that the painting goes well. The first step to repairing wall damage is to inspect them. Make note of the scope of work after looking for cracks, depressions, nail marks, chipping and blemishes. You can also get a step stool to get a proper view of the walls.
Choose the Paint for Your Walls
You might sometimes feel that this step is out of order, but this is the best time to decide the colour of the wall paints. It is when you see the current coat in good condition, you will have the opportunity to place paint swatches against the wall to see if it is good. Now is the best time to decide whether you should try different tints of the same colour or choose to go with one or different colours. You can get the new paint while repairing the walls.
Decide the Amount of Paint You Would Need
Now that you know the colour of the paint you require, you need to decide on how much paint you will need. The rule of thumb is that a gallon of paint will cover the walls of a 100-square-foot room, and you can do two coats with this quantity of paint.
To get an idea about the square footage of the walls you will have to paint, you will need to multiply the height of the wall by its width. For instance, a wall of nine-foot height and 10 feet in length equals ninety square feet. After you add the square footage of all the walls, you will have an idea of how many square feet you can cover with the paint.
Another important thing you will have to get clarity about is the decision regarding whether you are completely changing the colour of the walls. It will also give you an idea of how many coats you paint you will need to apply. For instance, if your walls were blue before and you now want to paint them yellow, you would need at least two coats of paint. Figure out how much paint you will need correctly. Nothing is worse than the paint supply getting over before you finish painting the walls.
Now Repair the Damages on the Wall
The most critical step in successful and flawless wall painting is the repairing of walls. Ensure to fill cracks, holes and divots with appropriate substances. You can repair substantial holes on the wall that are up to six inches using a patch kit and joint compound. You will have to draw the joint compound across the hole using a filing blade and then smoothen it down. Apply a second coat as it dries.
Ensure to fill the nail holes too as they will otherwise swallow the prime and paint. The joint compound will take a day to set up, but the spackling will dry in just two hours. This step may sometimes take a whole day. Get in touch with Sendhelper by booking a handyman service for you if you don’t have the time. Everything about painting and related cleaning in your space is on us!
Sand the Walls
Sanding is one of the most vital steps, which many would disregard if they plan to do the painting on their own. You will have to sand the walls if you want the walls of your home to be smooth once all the painting is complete. Even the spots you repaired on the wall with a filing blade will have raised edges. Therefore, it is crucial to use fine-grit sandpaper and work until you see that the surfaces are smooth. You can use sandpapers with 100-150 grit for this.
One of the challenges of this particular step is that you would need a lot of patience. Do not press down the sandpapers too hard with your fingers as it will result in the formation of grooves on the surface. You wouldn’t want to form any depressions on the walls and start with the spackling process all over again. Wipe the walls down using a damp cloth once you finish sanding. Follow by vacuuming the baseboards and the floor.
Get Tape and Drop Cloth
Painter’s tape is one of the much useful inventions. The amount of taping you will need to do depends on your skill level with a brush. If you are less skilled with brushes, you would need to run the tape along the edges of the ceilings, baseboards and any area you want to avoid painting. Keep the tape in place and force the very edge of it tightly against the edge of the wall using a clean putty knife. Doing this will help you ensure that the paint goes exactly where you want it to go.
Prime the Walls
You wouldn’t need to do priming for previously painted walls. However, if the walls are bare or painted with oil paint before, they might need some sealing. Priming can benefit in such cases. It is useful to seal or ensure the adhesion of the paint to the surface.
How to Prep Wallpapered Walls of Your Home?
There are some ways to strip wallpaper easily while you prepare your walls for painting. The steps we have listed below are the best that we have understood. Before jumping in, you must understand that the removal of wallpaper is time-consuming and strenuous. But we have a piece of good news for you- you wouldn’t want to put that wallpaper back on, so you don’t have to worry much about the wallpaper’s condition. After you get off the wallpaper, the walls will be free and ready for processes like priming and painting, as described above.
Use Drop Cloths
Use drop cloths to protect the floors. Make sure they are there against the walls to catch the excess water or paint. Get some old towels or shop towels to soak up excess water when you proceed with wetting the walls. It will be better if you can use portable lights with a drop of cord. You can plug this cord into another room- this will allow you to turn off the electricity in the room while still being able to see during the work.
Pull Off the Outside of the Wallpaper
You might need to make some long and shallow cuts on the wallpaper to pull the outside of the wallpaper. It is more likely to come off in sheets when you do it this way. However, many portions of the backing of the paper will probably stay stuck to the wall. It is something you should see coming. Try not to penetrate the underlying wall while scoring the wallpaper. Just keep in mind that every deep cut you make on it will stay as an error that you will need to correct later. You might find that the wallpaper is loose near the top of the wall. The longer the wallpaper that has been stuck onto the wall, the harder it is to come off. In such cases, you can pull it at a 45º angle for it to come off easily.
Wet the Wallpaper’s Backing to Loosen it
Get some amount of hot water, a pair of rubber gloves, a large sponge or even a floor mop first. Now, apply water where you find the backing of the wallpaper stuck. You may need to loosen the paste on the backing of the wallpaper, but make sure to not damage the drywall beneath it.
Gently Scrape the Backing
You have to be quite firm to get the backing of the wallpaper off, but you should also be gentle. Make sure that you do not mar the wall beneath the wallpaper while doing this. Some experts use spatulas to do this as spatulas are more flexible than putty knives. You will have to keep a wet cloth ready to clean the edge of the spatula. It tends to get covered with the old paste quickly.
Apply Gel to Remove Stubborn Patches
There will be areas where the glue will not scrape. You will need to use some gel stripper in those cases. The residual glue on the wall has to come off. Pull the gel stripper directly on the glue or the backing and leave it for around 20 minutes. You will then be able to scrape the gel, paper and glue using a putty knife or spatula.
If you are confident about doing this on your own, we wish you the best with painting your home to your heart’s desire. Otherwise, book the handyman service with the Sendhelper and see the results.
