How to Prepare a Room for Painting
For our Temecula homeowners,
This post is specifically written for you. Whether you’re attempting to paint your home yourself or looking to hire a painter in Temecula, the following steps will help you understand the exact process professional Temecula painters follow when preparing a room for painting. Enjoy!
1. Clear and Clean the Room
The very first step in prepping a room for painting is clearing the room. Yes, this is obvious but when we say “clear the room,” we’re talking about clearing everything out of the room that you will be painting in. Many people think that they can simply move large furniture around the room as they move onto each wall like a game of Four Corners. It is more efficient to move large furniture only twice – once out of the room and and once back in. You will have more space to work and it will save time.
As for cleaning the room, a vacuum with a brush attachment is perfect for cleaning baseboards, closet shelves, door trim, and around windows. Once the room is clean, lay out your drop cloths.
2. Fill Nail Holes
Fill nail holes and other punctures around the room. For efficient use of spackling, we use what we call a “spackle sack.” Pro Tip: place a scoop of your spackle in a small (12 in. x 12 in.) piece of painter’s plastic. Wrap the plastic around the spackle and twist the plastic to create a sack of spackle. Tie the plastic and puncture a small hole at the top of the spackle sack with a nail or the point of a knife. When pressure is applied to the spackle sack, the spackle comes out in a small amount, perfect for patching up small holes without wasting your spackle.
For larger holes, take a small scoop of spackle with your putty knife and scrape over the hole, making sure to wipe the wall around the hole clean afterwards.
3. Sand
Interior painting requires sanding doors, trim, spackled holes, and baseboards. This is a crucial part of the interior painting prep phase. Paint will cling more easily to a rough surface. A sanding sponge does more than enough for this. If the job requires having to paint over a fuse box or something similar, make sure to sand that as well. Oh, and wear a dust mask!
After sanding, remember to vacuum everything you sanded over with the brush attachment on your vacuum.
4. Caulk
This part of the process is frequently overlooked, but your local Temecula painting professional will never miss this step. Caulk is necessary when there are gaps between door trim, baseboards, molding, and the wall. Use a drip-less caulk gun and cut the tip of the caulk tube at a 45º angle. Pro Tip: have a small bucket of water handy. After running the caulk along the cracks, wet your finger with the water and trace your finger along the line of caulk. Wetting your finger will help you manipulate the caulk much easier than if your finger were dry. Don’t forget to check all the joints in the door casings!
5. Mask
After the caulking has dried (about 24 hours) it is time to mask the room in order to roll the ceiling and the walls. Use masking tap to cover and protect the following: power outlets, light switches, lighting fixtures and thermostats. Pro Tip: it’s a very smart idea to use masking paper to drape over the tops of windows to keep unwanted paint from splattering onto the glass.
Once all fixtures have been taped and covered, finish the masking process with the door & window trim and baseboards. You must use precision and be very attentive to detail in order to place the tape in a consistent straight line along the trim and baseboards.
6. Prime
The key to priming correctly is to think like a surgeon – you want to apply just a small amount of primer to any patches, spackled nail holes, or stains and be sure to “feather” the primer so I does not show up later. Pro Tip: if you have large patches or stains on your wall, we suggest using a weenie roller which will help those larger blemishes blend into the rest of the wall. Large brush strokes will show up later in the painting process. Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat!
For most interior priming, a good latex stain-blocking primer will be fine. If any metal surface is to be painted, like a fuse box, use an aerosol primer.
That’s it for our interior painting prep process! If you have questions about any of the steps described in this article, don’t hesitate to call your local Temecula painting service for clarification – they’ll be more than happy to assist you.
