Which home owner would not need some tips for some Home Improvement? Everybody who owns a house, at some point of time needs to undergo some home improvement to either remodel their interior or carry out some renovation and restoration. So follow this article for some useful tips on one of the key areas that is involved in the process of home improvement.
To start off, the most usual project that is taken up for Home improvement is the painting or the repainting of the home. The fact of the matter is that painting looks pretty easy, who hasn’t done some bit of coloring as a kid and soon enough learned to color within the lines but the problem is that real life painting of the walls of a house isn’t as easy as it appears; it does involve some amount of skill. Follow these tips below and hopefully you would be able to master painting as a home improvement task in no time, because after all painting an old wall in a new color brings back life to the house and the house seems to appear to have never looked so new. One paint job can do all of that.
First of all, picking the right color is very important. Even if you do everything right and follow all the rules correctly, if the color scheme that you choose does not go with everything else that you have inside the house, the effect will not quite be the same. When you select the paint for the room you must keep in mind the draperies, the furniture as well as the overall décor and the flooring etc; do not just pick a color because it suits your eye. The walls of the room must be the background for everything else that the room is constituted of. Here is a useful tip on how you could decide. Pick a few paint that you would likely to select and then paint them on a small surface at the paint store, then dry it with a hair dryer so you would know what color it will assume on the walls and you can put these samples against the walls of the room and then decide what would look best with the décor.
Now, once you have selected the paint that you would color your room in; now you have to carry out some simple procedures before you get down to business. You cannot just simply get up one morning and decide to start painting. The first step would be to clear the room of all the objects that would come in the way of the painting. This would include small pieces of furniture close to the walls and all the wall decorations etc. including television and other smaller objects. For those things that would be cumbersome to remove from the room and also the floor which you would not want paint on, cover it with sheets or plastic or even cardboard. Next step would be to clean the wall itself. The wall needs to be cleaned with TSP which should be mixed with water and then scrubbed onto the walls that you plan on painting. Basically the TSP removes the dirt and other stains and oily substances that may have accumulated on the walls and could affect your re-painting over it. Also, the cracks and holes on the walls need to be filled in. Drywall compound can be used to fill in these dents etc which should be allowed to dry for at least three hours. After it has dried it should be smoothened out with a sanding sponge before you paint over it yourself.
Now, after all the pre-requisites are fulfilled you need to start your painting. Start off by painting the edges. This is known as Trimming and works in the following way; use sharp brushstrokes around the edges, to best way to do this would be to purchase an edging pad that works on wheelers. But you must take care that the paint that you use for this is minimal and not too much as the paint has a tendency of sticking to the rollers itself and would end up coloring the ceiling as well. So start off with the edges including the corners and around all the fixtures that may be present on that particular wall. After this, the rest of the painting job should be done using a roller.
When you select a roller for the painting keep the following in mind; try getting a plastic core as it would be more durable and balanced than the card board ones that are also available. Also, pay attention to the texture of the wall itself when you select the Roller. If your wall is smooth with not much indented texture then get yourself a flat and smooth Roller and those walls that have textures such as Stucco etc. should get more fat and bushy rollers. Now when you are using the roller start off in the following way; Roll the paint on the roller in an upward movement and make sure that you do not start right from the bottom but at least a foot from the bottom and not completely from the edge but at least six inches from the corner. Now roll towards the corner and repeat it as you go along some more times. After you have reached the corner, start rolling again from the unpainted area and work your way back to the area that you have already painted. However, make sure that when you make repeated rolls you do it over newly applied paint that is wet, if you roll over an area that has already begun to dry, there will be lap marks and most of the times it is visible.
This procedure if followed carefully should make you successful in painting your room well and as always practice will make you perfect here too.
