| Prep Work, Walls, Trim |
| Prep Work, Walls, Trim |
From "Trade School"
episode DTRS-105 |
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In this episode of Trade School, we watch as Louis Pugliese gains the skills and experience to give a home a professional paint job.
The quality of an interior paint job is extremely important because the people who live there will see it, up close, every day. But the keys to a successful paint job lie in the groundwork you lay long before you begin to apply paint to the walls. In this segment we see Louis use a professional approach to prep work and painting ....
Basic Tools:Drop cloths
Cleaning materials
Painter's caulk
Putty knife
Screwdriver
Low tack masking tape
Utility knife
Paint tray
Sheepskin roller, large and small
Trim paintbrush
Eggshell or satin finish paint
Polyurethane floor paint
Razor blades The first step is to remove all the obstacles to the work area. If possible, move all the furniture out of the room. If there are items that can't be moved out of the room, push them to the center of the room and cover them with a tarp or drop cloth in order to protect them from paint.
Next, remove hardware such as faceplates on electrical sockets and light switches using a screwdriver (figure A). It is possible to tape these off and paint around them, but the quality of the paint job will suffer. Depending on the area to be painted it may also be a good idea to remove doorknobs, hinges, and handles.
Survey the room. Look at the walls and identify areas of damage or dirt. A clean, well-repaired surface provides the best foundation for a good paint job. Louis removes lead lugs left over from an old shelving unit from the wall, using a putty knife to pry them out (figure B).
He uses painter’s caulk to fill the holes (figure C) and the putty knife to smooth over the caulk and create a smooth, flat wall surface (figure D).
Once the obstacles are removed and the walls are clean and smooth, the room is ready to be masked. Louis uses low-tack masking tape to tape around fixtures that can’t be removed like wall sconces and phone jacks (figure E). Because in this job the floors will be painted as well as the walls, Louis doesn’t need to lay down a drop cloth or mask off the floor.
In many cases it takes a full day or more to adequately prepare an area to paint. Now Louis is ready (figure F) so he pours the paint into a tray and rolls his sheepskin roller several times in order to soak up an ample amount of paint (figure G). He rolls the paint slowly onto the wall because the roller will apply more paint in one coat than if he quickly runs the roller up and down (figure H). These walls are flat, but if they had texture it would also be important to run the roller in a "W" pattern in order to make sure all sides of the texture receive paint.
Using the big roller Louis covers the major area of the walls and ceilings fairly quickly (figure I). Then he goes back with the small roller to paint the hard-to-reach areas (figure J). Louis lets the paint dry before going back to apply a second coat.
Once the main color is complete, prep work begins again. On this project the trim is supposed to be white, so Louis must mask off all the areas that touch the trim to protect them from the white paint (figure K). It is imperative to watch carefully while taping to make sure the paint line will be straight and crisp. A utility knife can be useful to cut the tape so that it fits tightly around trim obstacles.
Once everything is taped off, Louis can paint the trim white. He uses a small roller to paint most of the trim (figure L) and finishes tight spots with a small trim brush (figure M).
Once the trim is dry, Louis can once more mask off the white in preparation for the last round of painting, in this case, the floor. Using specialized polyurethane floor paint that dries very hard and with a glossy shine, Louis rolls the gray color onto the floor (figure N). The fumes are strong and toxic, so Louis works fast, starting in the far corner and working his way toward the door. Once the floor is covered, it will take several days for the paint to cure before it will be hard enough to walk on.
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