Interior paint work is a rather intense process and can be quite difficult depending on a number of factors, such as if you have help from friends during the painting process, how much you learn beforehand to prepare you to get the work done correctly, and the like.
Painting your home interior can be challenging, but if you happen to make some of a few common mistakes, it will make the work all the more difficult and ultimately cause you to have to spend more time and money in getting your interior painted.
With that in mind, here are five mistakes to avoid while interior painting in Austin, TX in 2020.
1. Underestimating How Long It Will Take
You might look at a room and think that you have a good idea how long it is going to take to paint that room.
Based on the understanding that you have of how long it will take, you could set aside time to paint the interior of a room and make arrangements for people to come along to help you.
The problem will come if you get that estimate wrong and you end up with much work to be done at the end of the time that you have set aside — you will then have to scramble and pick time here and there when it is available to you to finish painting the room, which will ultimately make the paintwork that much worse as you will likely be rushing to get it done.
Rather than do all this, make sure that you have the time set aside for getting the paintwork done and set aside plenty of time for things like allowing the surface of your walls to dry after you clean them (more on this below) and the time to set up and protect the floors for the duration of the painting process.
2. Not Cleaning First
There are few things that are worse for the painting of a home interior that are like attempting to paint your home interior on top of walls that are, well dirty — painting on top of walls coated or even lightly coated with dust will make for a messy and sludgy and overall unpleasant mess.
Even if you only have the smallest amount of dust or grime on your walls, you will surely find that the paintwork does not go nearly as well as when you paint on walls that are clean.
The best thing you can do for yourself in painting the interior of your home is to make sure that your walls are well clean, even if the wall in question happens to be the ceiling of the room.
3. Not Properly Choosing A Color
At the end of the day, you’re going to be the one that will be living with the colors that you choose for your home, but the way that you choose your color or colors can be greatly bettered if you think about the process of choice and how one can decide what color looks best in the home.
Typically a person will go to the paint store and pick a color based on how good it looks there — but this is not really a good thing as you cannot be sure that the paint that looks good in the paint store will look just as good in your home as the light conditions don’t necessarily match up.
The better thing to do is to take a few small samples of paint form the store (they only cost a few dollars) and paint a few small swatches in your home and then you will be able to see how those swatches hold up against the different light conditions in your home.
4. Not Sanding
When preparing to paint the interior of your home, you should not even think about skipping the sanding step.
Sanding is the step that you take prior to applying the coat of primer — and like primer, having a properly sanded surface is a good step in having a surface that is smooth enough for you to apply a couple of coats of paint.
By skipping the sanding step you may be saving a bit of time (especially as you will have to clean the sanding dust at some point before continuing) but you will ultimately have less than an optimal paint job.
5. Painting Directly From The Can
This is a mistake that many people make and it is perfectly understandable — you look at the paint can, you look at the room that’s being handled, and you figure why not — you can handle it.
The problems come when you are moving around the room and dipping and painting. You suddenly make a wrong turn and knock over the whole can — or if you are in the process of getting paint on the brush and you get too much on it because the can isn’t suitable for the application of paint to the brush in a proper manner.
Rather than do this, you should first put the paint in a smaller container better meant for painting, or even a painting tray — they are the better thing to use for the interior painting of your home.