When you think of painting a room, you probably see yourself standing in overalls with a roller and bucket of paint. But a successful painting job requires 90% preparation to 10% painting. In fact, preparing my bedroom for painting took three hours, while the paint job itself lasted for 15 minutes. And in this lies the secret of easy, successful painting.
The basics
You'll need to cover all exposed surfaces in your room before painting it. This includes furniture, the floor, molding, doors and windows. Good preparations results in an easy painting job and a quick cleanup.
What to buy?
To save money, buy an extra-large case of rolled up painter's tarp rather than a single roll. Though the tarp will not be as thick as with individually packaged painter's trap, it will be sufficiently strong for preparing your room for painting. And you will reduce your cost by around 75%.
Next you'll need painter's tape. From my experience the beige kind works better than the blue in that it does not stick too strongly to the surfaces below. This prevents damage to your doors, casings or molding which you will coat in tape as part of preparing your room for painting.
Cover Doors and Windows
Begin preparing your room for painting by unrolling painter's tarp and suspending it over your doors and windows. Use the painter's tape to adhere the tarp in place, making sure you cover all the casing. Be sure to close any air vents in the room, as air flow will inflate the hanging tarp and loosen it from the wall.
Cover Floor Molding
Starting in a corner of the room, stretch a length of painter's tarp on the floor parallel with the wall. Secure the tarp over your base molding with painter's tape. In this way when you paint the wall, the tape will get painted, not your molding.
Cover Floors
Now stretch painter's tarp over the rest of the floor, connecting the sections to the tarp already secured to your base molding. If you have large pieces of furniture in the way, simply drape them with painter's tarp, then connect tarp around the floor.
The process of preparing a room for painting is laborious but pays off in the long run. The painter's tape you adhere over molding and casing will keep the wooden trim clean from accidental paint smears. If you fail to protect these surfaces, you may have to re-paint them as part of your painting project.
In addition, painter's tarp makes clean up a breeze. Simply peel off the painter's tape everywhere, then roll up the trap. Though you can't recycle the tape, you can certainly recycle the painter's tarp.
In my bedroom, preparing my room for painting was boring, but the paint job was so quick and easy, I was grateful for all my hard work beforehand. Best of all, clean up took me a record ten minutes.
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