July 3rd, 2006
paint the town red?
We took some video of our new apartment yesterday, since it’s still empty and (most of) the repairs have been done. (Our landlord has been great, filling in all the holes, recaulking the bathtub, defrosting the refrigerator, etc., so we’re not really all that irked that it’s taking a few extra days.)
One thing we noticed while filming and walking around in the early evening light is that the walls are really filthy. They’re dirtiest around the vents, which makes sense, but they’re also gross behind where the former tenants had their couch, and, for some odd reason, above the faux fireplace. The wall above the faux fireplace, in fact, looks like it was at one time even DIRTIER, and someone took to it with cleanser and sort of moved the dirt all around. There are definite scrub streaks.
So this week, I think our goal will be to clean the walls and the….dum ta da dum!…PAINT.
I’ve actually never painted an apartment. I’ve painted interiors before, but only in my own home and only when the floors weren’t installed. We renovated my childhood home when I was in high school, and I painted most of the living areas. But since the floor wasn’t down, it wasn’t a big deal when I spilled an entire gallon can of paint all over the place. We just wiped it up, let it dry, and carpeted over it later.
Unfortunately, in the 12 or so years since that happy time, I haven’t really gotten more coordinated. So I have some concerns about painting. Also, our new apartment has really high ceilings, so I think we’ll have some problems with that, too. Our landlord has a ladder which I believe is kept in the basement, so we’ll use that if we have to, but if for some reason he keeps it elsewhere, we may end up using a stepstool–or buying our own ladder, heaven forbid.
So I’m excited about the idea of painting, but am sort of dreading the actual process. I don’t know why, either. We have plenty of time–the movers won’t be moving our furniture for almost two weeks. Even though we’ll be living there in about a week (sleeping on an IKEA futon-bed we’re going to buy this weekend), we won’t have any STUFF in the place. So painting will actually be sort of easy–no need to get big dropcloths or move furniture around. But I’m still nervous about it all. Maybe part of that is because I have NO IDEA what color we’ll be using. I’m not even going to try to match the white on the baseboards and windows (and I am NOT painting those things), so we’ll have to do a color of some kind. But do we do ONE color or more than one? Do we do accent walls?
I guess at some point over the next several days, I’ll need to go by Home Depot or something and figure out the answers to those questions. And if I can’t buy paint before then, at least I can clean walls. And probably pick up some primer, since there are so many patches on the walls that I’m afraid to paint without priming.
Does anyone have any advice for me before we take on this task?
comments
We used Lowe’s American Spirit paint on our interior walls and it covered very nicely.
Get that blue painter’s tape. Do not cheap out and use masking tape; it will take the paint off the trim and windows and then you’ll have to repaint those too. (Hypothetically, of course. We would *never* cheap out and try to use masking tape where we should have used painter’s tape…)
Do the edging first, and go farther with it than you think you’ll need to. That way you won’t have to go so close to the tape with the roller and possibly get paint on the ceiling. Or floor.
Buy lots of blue masking tape and mask off areas you don’t want paint on (this seems fairly obvious, but we just came from looking at our new house and they seem to have neglected this step in painting a room, some of the trim and portions of the carpet blue. Darkish blue. I’m betting at least some of it was unintentional.) Similarly, take off phone jacks, outlets, light switches before painting. Don’t paint around. Do buy some of the sponges/special tools for doing tight areas like corners & edges. So much easier.
Wear an old baseball cap you don’t care about to protect your hair.
Paint in bare feet so you can tell when you’ve stepped in paint and don’t end up tracking it on the carpet.
Beyond that - I say try anything that sounds like fun! I always figure that painting other people’s property is just an opportunity to play around - even if I have to repaint it later. I’m a big fan of 2 tone rooms. I don’t recommend light green and mocha as a color combination though - it looks too much like spumoni.
Spumoni?
This reminds me of how much I’ve wanted to paint the living room of my law school apartment a light gold/ bronze for the last two years, and didn’t because my roommate for those two years prefers white walls. Now she is graduated, and I am still there, so perhaps I will sneak back this summer and paint before the new roommate shows up…
Make sure you buy one of the little ‘edging’ tools. They’re rectangular and have a 4″x3″ pad (buy extra pads, too). It makes doing corners and areas around trim incredibly easy. If you’re careful, you don’t even need to tape too carefully when using one. Also, I suggest buying a big roll of the heavy duty plastic to lay on the floor…it’s like $10 for more than you’ll ever need and it makes cleanup really easy. Also, make sure each coat has completely dried before adding successive layers.
Otherwise, have fun!
Latex gloves. They are dirt cheap and keep paint off hands. Very handy, no pun intended.
I second everything I’ve read before, with the exception of the Lowe’s paint…I hated that crap. My favorite paint to paint with is actually Sears Easy Living. Great color selections, rolls on really smooothly. The only other suggestions I can come up with, get yourself a “paint key” to open the cans. It also opens beer bottles.
Different widths of blue tape are good. Invest in a good couple brushes, either 2 inch or 1 1/2 inch for doing corners and trim. Good brushes make all the difference. Wooster is good, so is Purdy. Hmmm…and if you’re doing roller work, buy the good metal pan and a few plastic liners. The orange plastic pans suck. I say all of this as one who has painted every room in my house and actually loves to paint.