Prepping A Wall

The pictures from the walls if you’re going to put them right back up where they were you can leave the nail there and just kind of paint around it if you want. Of course, if you’re not going to put them back up or you’re going to move them you’ll want to pull out all the nails and screws now.

The next thing you want to do is just give the room a quick cleaning okay take the vacuum with the brush attachment around vacuumed out the closet shelves, windows, baseboard, and the heater just everything really quickly. Just in case you need help with your interior painting Falls Church VA my company Johnnyboy Painting does all custom painting projects.

Okay, the next step is to spackle any nail holes in the walls or the trim now one thing you might want to do is make what I call a spackle ghost. Now here’s how you make a spackle ghost take a big scoop of spackle. Stick it right in the middle of a piece of your painters plastic then turn it into a ghost twist it put a piece of tape right around the neck then take a nail and poke up a little hole right in the end of it.

Now, this is going to dispense spackle in a way that’s much easier to get into little nail holes then if you’re trying to scoop it out of the bucket every time now for little nail holes and thumbtack holes just take a little bit of sparkle on your finger rub it right in there and then get it all off the surface now if you have a bigger hole like this here’s what you want to do now first thing you want to do is just take your finger and get any loose stuff off of there they put a good amount of spackle onto your putty knife here go right over like that and then as few wipes as possible.

Now you can even take your finger and kind of smooth out the wall around. Of course, you’re going to want to spackle any nail holes in your trim now here’s how you do that. First of all, take the tip of your finger rub the hole to get any loose debris away from the edge then put a little bit of spackle on your finger. Push it into that hole then put a little more on your finger and push it in again as hard as you can even a little bit more and push it in one more time.

What this does is you push so much spackle into the hole that you overfill it and when it dries it actually pushes itself back out and that means that when you come to sand it later you’re sanding a raised edge down which is a much better way to try to make it look smooth. Always remember, if this information is not easy for you to do it yourself, please don’t hesitate to call us at 571-278-3101 for interior painting Falls Church VA.

If you don’t put enough stack blinder the spackle will shrink back into the hole and you’ll have a depression that you’ll never be able to get rid of okay now after the spackle has time to dry it’s time to sand now you can use sandpaper if you want maybe 180 220 grit.

I kind of like these sanding sponges though these are real nice as they move quickly they’re great for getting their little edges just like that and really all you’re doing here is cuffing up the surface a little bit so that it will accept the next coat of paint now if you spackle nail holes, of course, you’re going to want to get those sanded smooth.

If you spackle big holes in the wall you’re going to go on a hip down with the sanding sponge real quickly you’re gonna be painting doors give the door surface a hit with the sanding sponge and here I’ve got this fuse box it’s metal and I’m going to paint this too because it’s kind of ugly so I just want to make it try to blend into the wall as much as possible. I’m going to handle with the sanding sponge and then I’m going to hit it with a coat of primer with an aerosol can and then it’ll be all ready to accept a coat of latex paint of course in addition to the door casings and the windows.

If you’ve got baseboard or a crown molding you’re going to want to give that a cuff with the sanding sponge okay now after you’re done with the spackling and the sandy and the vacuuming now it’s time to start talking alright now you’re going to want to bring a little bucket of water with you with a rag in it so that you can keep dipping your fingers that really helps you manipulate the now.

I recommend a dripless gun and here’s how you want to cut the tip off just go back maybe eighth of an inch quarter of an inch cut it off right there at a 45 degree angle and you should be good to go in a room like this there really isn’t too much talking to do okay I’m going to go check the edge of where every piece of trim meets the wall if there’s any crack there I’m going to it.

Then I’m going to rub it in with my finger just like this run it down get your finger a little wet and just rub that right in there like that can do a real quick now you want to check all the joints in the door casings and the window casings places like this. If you’ve got that old Brown 1970s wood trim and you’re going to paint it white then you’ve got a lot of caulking to do on your door casings in your window casing a really assistant matter going around and taking a real close look at everything anywhere you see a crack you’re going to want to get some in there because those cracks will show up.

Later you when you’re done with the caulking and you’ve given it at least a day to drive now it’s time to mask the room so that you can roll the ceiling and the walls first of all you’ll notice that I’ve draped an awning across the top of all the windows and door frames now I’ve also masked the top of this baseboard heater. I put a couple pieces on the door to prevent the door handles from getting speckled when I’m rolling the ceiling.

Of course, I’ve put a piece of tape over all the light switches and all the outlets mask off any thermostats or anything else on the wall. It’s probably a good idea to mask off the light fixture make sure it’s covered with plastic. Okay, once you’ve got everything masked and there’s only one thing left to do and prepping the room and that’s priming. Also, if you need help with priming or painting give us a call at 571-278-3101 for interior painting Falls Church VA.

Now, the thing to remember about priming is you want to be a little surgical about it. You want to take a brush and very carefully plot little bit of primer on them then make sure you feather it out so that it doesn’t show up later. If you’ve got big patches on the wall that need to be primed I suggest using a wing roller that would help them blend in. If you start making big brushstrokes in the middle wall that might show up later.

For most interior priming just a good latex interior scheme blocking primer will do okay. So now you know how to prep a room for painting. The best thing about prepping a room for painting is that after you’ve done all this work the actual painting seems like a treat.

To see my video on how to paint the ceiling and video on how to paint the walls and the trim, go to my website on how to paint a house right. Well, you’ll find all those videos and more and a lot of other helpful information that I’ve put together to help you paint your house right. This information is provided by Johnnyboy Painting. We do interior painting Falls Church VA.