How to Prep Your House for Interior Painting

Painting is probably the best way to give your house a pick me up, and frankly, paint jobs need redoing every once in a while just to avoid having it fading out. However, you can't just slap some paint on the walls and call yourself done. A shoddily done paint job will peel off. You'll have to redo it within a year or two.

The key to a good paint job is preparing the walls you're about to paint. Once the space is ready, you can paint with abandon. In that spirit, here is the steps to prep your house for interior painting so you can give it the coat of paint it deserves.

1. Get everything away from the walls. We mean everything, too. Remove all the furniture or at least put it all in the middle of the room and cover it with a drop cloth. Remove the draperies and the rods holding up the draperies. Remove light switches, and loosen light fixtures so that they hang away from the walls or ceiling. Cover the fixtures with bags or the equivalent.
2. Inspect the walls for any damage. Look for some of the following: popped nails, holes, cracks, and peeling old paint.
3. Fix the damage. Remove popped nails and redrive them into wall as far as you can. Cover the nail head and fill the old hole with putty and spackling compound. Use a premixed drywall patching compound to fill in small holes, leaving it low and letting it dry, and use a patch kit to fill big holes, leaving it even with the wall and filling in the patch outline with spackling compound. Cut out cracks, vacuum out the dust, and fill in the hole with plaster.
4. Scrape off loose particles and sand smooth areas that have chipped.
5. Clean the walls with sudsy water and prime bare woodwork.
6. Use masking tape to cover trim, areas where two colors will meet, baseboards and anywhere else you don't need your paint to go. Take the tape off a little at a time and use your thumb to lay the tape out flat. If you are doing anything fancy where 2 colors will meet, use a carpenter’s level to outline your design faintly with pencil before going over it with tape.

Once you have followed all these instructions, you'll find smooth, clean walls to paint. The paint will stick to these walls and look brilliant for years to come. Of course, if you need any help with your project, contact us. We take house painting seriously and will strive to make your house beautiful.