Residential Painting Tips - How to Prepare a Room Before You Paint

Before you begin painting the interior of your house, there are some things you need to know about preparing the room(s) before you pull out your brush and roller. You must start with removing all hanging objects from the walls. The next thing you need to do is move all the small items into another room or part of the house. Then, move all the large furniture items to the center of the room. Finally, cover any remaining furniture with a good drop cloth.

It's at this point that you can get started with preparing the walls. Start by washing them down so that you can see if there are any flaws that need to be fixed. I like using my Swiffer Sweeper with the wet cloths for this because the long handle makes it easy to reach the ceiling and tops of the walls to clean away any dirt and cobwebs.

Your next step is to fill in any holes (from nails or tacks) with spackling compound. Check the tops of the baseboards to see if they are pulling away from the walls. If so, apply some latex caulking to fill in the gaps. For any larger holes in the walls, you will need to pick up a drywall patch which you can easily find at a hardware or paint retail store. To repair the hole, simply place the patch over the hole and then spread the spackling paste over the patch with a putty knife. Allow the spackling paste to dry for about one hour (perhaps more for the larger repairs) and then you can sand everything down. While you're at it, you can sand the walls completely to remove any flakes of old paint and ensure a smooth finish.

Once any necessary repairs are completed, you will need to prime the walls to at least cover the places where you've made the repairs. If you are planning on using a good quality paint from a paint retailer such as Benjamin Moore or Sherwin Williams, you may be able to get away with only spot priming the places where you've applied the spackling compound and caulking. The reason is that many of the higher quality finishing paints contain a primer anyway. You'll need to prime everything beforehand if you're using a lower quality paint. Then, allow the primer to dry for about one hour before applying your paint.

One final tip, if you're not planning on painting the baseboards, you should apply painter's tape to the top of the baseboards so that any splatter from rolling the walls does not get on them. Using painter's tape rather than masking tape is highly recommended because it's low tack and shouldn't peel the finish off the baseboards.


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If you found this information on how to prep for painting helpful, visit Kitchener Waterloo Painters to read more useful tips.