How to Prep for Painting (w_ Monica from The Weekender)

Today .

I'm gonna show you how to properly prep your room to get it ready for paint .

I'm a huge believer in doing it right .

And guys be honest with me , how many of you have actually prepped a room the way you should not many of you .

I know it's one of those things where you gloss over parts or skip it just because it seems like it takes too much time but doing it right the first time and properly prepping can actually save you time in the long run and ensure that you're super happy with your paint job .

I'm gonna show you all the essentials and even some additional steps if you want to go the extra mile .

But either way , when you're done watching this video , you're gonna know everything you need to do it , right ?

Basically , prepping a room is all about two things .

First protecting , protecting your floors , your furniture , basically anything you don't want to get paint on and second preparing , preparing your trim your walls .

You want your surfaces to be as pristine as possible .

So that when the paint does go on , it goes on perfectly .

Let's get prepping .

So this is a bedroom and it's a typical bedroom situation .

We have a closet , we have a window , we have a bed that we're dealing with .

The first thing I need to do is to clear all the furniture out of here , get the accessories out and take anything off the walls .

My friend , Bill is a professional painter .

He's going to be helping me throughout this entire process .

Pro tip , remove any fish and actually all animals before you paint .

Obviously , we're taking everything off the walls so that we can paint the walls .

And I'm gonna pull out my nails .

As I go , these holes will take care of that in a bit .

If you're taking something off the wall , that's going to go into the exact same place like this lamp , you want to take it off , but then leave the two nails in there .

That way when I'm going around the room speckling holes , I don't accidentally spackle these and then have to remeasure and rehang it whatever you can't get out of the room , you want to still protect it .

So move your furniture to the center of the room and cover it up with plastic sheeting or a plastic drop cloth .

Luckily , we're able to get all the furniture out of here .

All right .

So we have the room cleared out and if you care about your carpet or your floors , the next step is protecting them .

So I prefer canvas drop cloths .

I think they do a great job , they are easy to work with and they protect the floors .

Now , I mentioned the essentials versus preference .

If you want to go the extra mile , you can put down plastic sheeting underneath your drop cloth .

So why would someone choose to go that extra mile and put down plastic sheeting ?

There is a chance that you could spill some paint and it could go through the canvas .

So we use the plastic sheeting as just an extra precaution to protect your carpets .

So two mil is a great thickness in terms of durability , it's going to hold up more to foot traffic , anything thinner than that , it may tear .

Ok .

We are planning to paint the base board and all the trim in this room .

But as a temporary fix , I'm going to use painter's tape and connect the plastic sheeting up on to the base board just a couple inches .

This is going to be really easy to remove later .

But for right now , adding maybe 2 to 3 pieces on each wall will hold this plastic sheeting in place when we're putting our canvas drop cloths down .

Trust me , it really helps it from moving all around .

All right now that the floors are all protected with our plastic , which again is an optional step .

We are going to put down our canvas drop cloths and there are two types .

One is areas which you can think of those as the big rectangle squares and then runners and those are , if you think like a rug like long and thin .

So we're gonna start with larger drop cloths and then we'll use the runners to fill in any gaps that we need .

Ok .

So our drop cloth is wider than the width of our room .

So we're going to do two things .

I want to get rid of as many wrinkles as possible .

If you have bumps in your drop cloth , it's really easy to trip on it .

And the last thing you want to do is trip with paint in your hands and then also pull all my excess to one side .

So I only have to make one fold right when you're folding like this , you just remember you want to make sure you're folding towards you .

So when clean up time comes , if you do have some stray drips of paint , they're not ending up on your carpet .

All right on to some surface , prep the walls in this room are dry wall and that's probably the most common situation .

However , I know that some of you have plaster , every situation is a little bit different , but since dry wall is going to be the most relatable to all of you , we're going to address that .

We've inspected the walls for holes , cracks , dings , dents and dirt .

And Bill is getting started on cleaning some of the dirt that we found off the walls behind the head board we found a little bit behind some of the artwork .

This is super common .

If you are not starting with a new construction space , you've already had things up on the wall , dirt can get trapped behind it happens .

It's no big deal , but it's definitely something you don't want to gloss over .

We want to take care of it .

So what he's using is just a spray bottle filled with warm water and about two tablespoons of a gentle detergent in there .

You're not trying to make it so that you can't see that there was ever dirt there .

The paint will take care of that .

You just want to get rid of anything that's loose on the surface .

All right .

So now is the time to start repairing wall imperfections .

Want to go through and fill any of those before painting .

If you were to just paint it , you're still going to see it .

Don't think that you can hide it with paint .

Now , if you have a larger hole or a deeper gash , you might need to use joint compound .

We have a step by step video that will walk you through those larger wall repairs so you can check that out .

So we have two different types of holes here .

So this one here is a traditional nail hole .

That one and then this one though is more of a paint chip .

I have a four inch putty knife and patch plus primer spackle .

The reason I like this is that it dries in 30 minutes .

It doesn't have a lot of shrinkage .

So it's going to stay the same size and it's super easy to work with .

It really hides the imperfections .

So for the imperfection below , you can see that there's kind of the edges are raised up and sticking out .

So I'm gonna use the back of my putty knife and I'm going to press that into the hole .

Basically , I'm making an indent .

I want all the imperfections to be on the inside of the wall .

Nothing raised on the outside .

Now that it's indented , I'm gonna load up the corner of my blade and I'd say like this amount will work for your average size nail hole .

So , what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna press it onto the wall and my first pass is going to be kind of a soft angle .

And then I'm gonna hold my knife almost perpendicular to the wall and I'm gonna go sideways .

So again , I'm just gonna load up my knife , press it in .

I'm gonna do a soft diagonal and then perpendicular .

These are filled .

And because I'm using quick dry , they'll be ready to sand and paint in 30 minutes , there can be all kinds of wall imperfections and honestly , I can't predict exactly what you're going to run into .

But I'm going to show you an example of something that I just came across here .

And basically , this is a ridge in the wall .

It's an imperfection that's actually raised .

Instead of being a hole , it probably is from someone putting a bead of here and then painting over it .

But regardless of what it is , we need to fix it .

So what we're going to try and do first is use my five in one tool to kind of knock it down a bit , see how much I can chip away at it without doing too much damage to the wall .

So my five in one tool has two sides to it .

In this part , the beveled side here and then this side is flat for this .

I want to make sure that the bevel is facing in towards the wall .

If it was facing out , when I go to chip it , it might actually do more damage than I'm looking for .

I'm going to go along the imperfection in the same direction .

If I were to go up and down , I might chip off too much dry wall and just make a much bigger gap than I'm looking for .

I'm sure you're noticing that my tool is actually marking up the wall , but don't worry , the end goal here is to paint the walls .

This will get all covered up right now that I've kind of knocked it down a bit .

I'm going to switch methods and turn to sandpaper .

I have an 80 grit sandpaper here .

It's pretty coarse .

I want to be a bit aggressive with this and I'm going again , go in the same direction as the imperfection .

We're trying to get this as flush as we possibly can with the wall .

All right .

Now that this is sanded down , we need to repair , pair the holes in the indent and we can't use the same quick dry speckle .

We actually need to use joint compound and that is better for larger holes and imperfections .

Right .

Correct .

Ok .

So talk me through what we're going to do here .

We're going to feather it out .

We're going to use a larger blade and we're going to use joint compound .

We're just gonna it across left to right .

Same , same way as the way the gouge was .

We need to allow this full dry time .

And I'm actually even stick a box fan on this wall so that maybe it can cut down the dry time a little bit .

When you start really looking at your walls , you're going to find all kinds of imperfections .

And another really common one are old paint drips .

So this is from a previous paint job and as you can see , it's just dripping here down onto my trim .

If we paint over that , you're just going to see it again even more .

So , all we need to do is I have my 2 20 finish sandpaper on here and I'm just going to knock down that old paint .

So that way , it's nice , nice and smooth and you'll really never even know it was there while our joint compound is drying , we're going to deal with any areas in the room that need to be recock .

And what you'll see usually is that cocking needs to be touched up around like where the baseboard and the wall meets or around window trim .

Cock is the best solution for this .

So I need to open up my tube of cock .

So I'm going to take the tip and I'm going to put it right into the spout cutter .

When I'm putting it in , I'm going in at about a 45 degree angle .

Then to cut it , you just squeeze the handle for this .

We're using fast dry paint cock .

So the bead is on and a lot of times people will just run their finger along it , but that's actually not a great idea because your finger is round and you really want your wall to meet your baseboard at a 90 degree angle .

So instead of our finger , we're gonna use our five in one tool and we're gonna use this small square side here .

Now , what you'll do is you'll take your damp rag and you'll put it in one layer over it , hold it nice and tightly .

This is going to give you a nice square angle that you can work with .

We're going to take that starting in the corner and run it along the edge of the bead of cough that you've just put on and it creates a really nice clean square 90 degree angle for you .

Ok .

Our wall repairs are dry and now it's time to move on to sanding .

And this time I am actually going to be using 2 20 grit sandpaper .

That's kind of a finished sandpaper .

It's gonna give me a really nice smooth finish , perfect for paint .

So this may seem a little bit excessive to some of you but always need to go safety first .

So I have eye protection and a mask so that I don't breathe in any of the dust and my eyes are protected when we are doing , finish standing as opposed to going in the straight back and forth motion .

We're actually going to be going in a circular motion and that will feather out the imperfection and give us the smoothest finish again .

We're trying to get this as flush as we possibly can with the wall .

Don't be surprised if you get a little dusty .

Ok .

So our walls are sparkled and sanded and now we need to do a bit more clean up and I promise we're almost done prepping .

What I have here is a damp rag .

You're gonna use your damp rag along your baseboards .

You may have some of the spackled dust that has come down onto the base boards .

Then I have a dry rag .

This is really great for the dry wall and the walls itself and make sure you check your corners for cobwebs .

At this point , I'm going to go around the room and remove all of my outlet and switch plate covers .

Guys .

How many of you have been lazy and painted around a switch plate or an outlet ?

It is so not worth it .

First of all , hardly ever looks clean and perfect .

And second of all , next time around , if you ever do need to take this off , you might actually ruin your paint job .

So it's very quick and easy .

And my preference is to wait until I've finished all of my sanding so that I get less dust going in behind my walls .

First step to removing is actually going down and shutting off the breaker for your room .

It might sound excessive , but you really want to make sure that you're always going safety first when dealing with anything involving electricity .

And now I'm going to remove it using a flathead screwdriver once I have it out a little pro tip here is that I actually like to put it right back in .

They are so hard to keep track of .

Now .

I'm taking a small piece of my painter's tape and I'm just going to cover up my holes in my outlet so that I'm sure not to get paint on those as well in this room .

We're not painting the ceiling , but we are painting the walls in the trim and we're going to start out with the walls .

This is kind of hotly debated in the painting world .

What do you paint first trim walls , trim walls , everyone has an opinion on it and you can make a good case either way .

But for an average homeowner , we're going to recommend that you start with the walls that way if you have any overspray or anything on your trim , it's kind of the last thing you do and it really cleans up the whole job and looks great .

So , since I'm painting walls first , my next step is taping off my baseboard and trim and to do that , I have two inch painter's tape and I'm going to start back in the corner and I'm lining it up with the top of the return .

You don't want your tape to be up on the wall surface because that's what we're painting .

The key here is to try not to work in small segments .

You just want to work in one long piece .

This makes it so that you have a perfectly seamless long line instead of kind of starting in stopping .

Now , I want to really seal the tape .

Nothing is worse than taping and then coming back a few minutes later and seeing that it's kind of flopped off the wall .

So you want to properly seal it .

You have a couple options to do this .

You can use the edge of your five in one tool and pull it along .

But occasionally if you apply too much pressure , your five in one could rip the tape .

You could also use a plastic putty knife .

This works really well .

Kind of the same way you're trying to get a square and straight of a line as possible and really press it down in there and you can use just the corner of like a store's bonus card or credit card and you can just drag that right along the corner as well .

In addition to taping off my baseboards , I'm also taping off all the window and door casings for the exact same reason .

I don't want to get any paint on them .

Taping around .

These is a bit easier than the baseboard molding because there's a lot more surface area to work off of .

And now friends , you're ready to paint .

We prepared this room and we did it right .

We took our time and protected all of our surfaces and then we prepared our walls , we cleaned , we patched holes , we sanded , but this room is now ready for the perfect paint job .

Remember ?

Do it right .

Start with those .

Want to learn more .

Be sure to check out the lowe's youtube channel for great step by step and how to videos and lowe's dot com slash how to for all kinds of projects .