Painting Walls

One of the cheapest ways to update a room is to change the paint color.

Before we get to the ‘how to’ part though, a couple of things to keep in mind:

If you rent, ask permission first before painting. If it’s approved, you will likely need to change the color back, so paint neatly and consider avoiding deep colors (red, black, dark purple or dark brown) that are hard to repaint back to a white or light color. When you get ready to paint back to the original color, use several coats of a good primer if you did use a darker color. Avoid dripping paint on baseboards or painting over outlets and outlet covers. You can’t re-paint outlets and covers, so you will likely end up having to pay to have them replaced.
If you are wanting to paint a dark color, you’ll want to use a primer made for dark paint. Otherwise, you’ll likely use more coats of actual paint than anticipated. (And spend more money.)
Do you like a paint color made by one manufacturer but don’t want to pay that much for their paint? (Ask me about my addiction to Farrow and Ball colors, but aversion to paying $80 for a gallon of paint. Ditto for other higher-priced brands like Benjamin Moore.) Nearly all paint manufacturers can match colors from other brands. Probably the only time you won’t be able to do that would be when the store sells both brands. For example, Home Depot sells Glidden and Behr, so you won’t be able to have them match a Behr paint color in Glidden paint. Also keep in mind that the base paint may differ slightly in sheen or color. The match may not be exact enough to touch up one brand’s paint with another, but it will be close enough if you’re painting with it from the start.
If you’re too lazy to cover the floor ahead of time (like I am), at least get something to cover the area just underneath where you are painting. When you move to the next section, move the newspaper or plastic too. No matter how careful you are, there usually always seems to be at least a drip or two.
To paint a room that has furniture and other items in it already, there are two basic options – push everything to the middle of the room, or move things away one section at a time and then move back when you move to the next section. (In the case of the later, don’t push things back up completely against the wall until the paint has dried. Yes, I speak from experience.)
The paint tray liners are very useful. In addition to making cleanup of the paint trays easy, they are great for using to set your paint buckets on while you’re using them. The paint buckets drip quite a bit after pouring and tend to get messy.
Speaking of, the plastic half-moon shaped inserts that sit into the lip of the paint buckets are fabulous. If you’re using latex paint, you can remove dried paint from them (and other plastic containers) by running them under water. The paint won’t permanently adhere to plastic in most cases, so the water loosens the paint enough that you can simply peel the paint off to clean.