When do we get to paint?
By now you probably realized that 80% of Painting is preparing for the paint. Anything that sits under the paint will show through and that means lots of work before you can actually paint. But since the room is prepped we can start.
The best way to paint is to start in area the area that is farthest away from the door and and continue around the room until you get back to the place you started but there are a few tricks to cutting down on the problems.
First you want to paint any closets or built-ins this will let you work quickly on large areas.
Also you should cut in the borders of your room with a 2 inch brush because your paint roller won’t be able to get all the way into corners and may cause too much spattering if you get close to the ceiling or the moldings.
Since your ceiling will probably be white and your room another color you should paint the ceiling first so spattering won’t fall onto the walls.
So, lets put the steps in order:
1) Ceiling
2) Closets, built-ins and drywall around set in windows
3) Paint the corners and borders of the wall with a 2 inch brush
4) Paint the main walls
5) Paint the moldings and any details last.
If you will be painting doors then it is often a good idea to remove them at the hinge and paint them on saw horses. Painting them flat will reduce runs but will require that they dry before you can paint the other side.
When you paint the large main areas of the Ceiling or walls you want to apply the paint evenly. When you first load your paint roller there will be too much paint on it. If you try to paint in straight lines you will get too much paint at the beginning and not enough at the end.
This means your first strokes should be in the form of a M and then you come back and fill in the remaining areas.
Once you have the main area covered you can then come back with your roller and do overlapping straight strokes to get the paint even and uniform.
you should stick to sections of the wall that are no bigger then what you can cover with one paint loading. A 4×4 foot or 6×6 foot area is pretty conservative
Just make a big M 4×4 then fill in the area at the top of the wall then do the same under that. Once the wall is covered with paint follow up with the roller to even out the top and bottom sections.
While you move along the wall always overlap on to the last wet section about half a rollers width. If you mess up a little don’t worry you can always go back and do some top to bottom full length strokes to fix the pattern.
Never apply the paint in a crosshatch pattern. This means if you start painting up and down don’t try to even out your work by painting horizontally. This will only lead to bad patterns in the paint.