Painting Pro Tips: 3 of the many things I have learned about painting over the years
Let’s just bring this fact out to the open: you can paint.Most of the homeowners we encounter have painted at least one room in their homes. There’s something very important in those first two sentences: anybody can and many people have. Through your painting endeavors, you have either experienced far too many drips on the carpet, trim, and cats; or you realized that you actually hate it.
You know what I hate? Doing my laundry. That’s why for all eternity, my clothes will be in a giant heap on the folding table that we affectionately call the “junk table”. The point is that the household tasks I disagree with tend to get neglected a little longer than they should.
Are you smelling what I’m stepping in?
If you hate painting, that’s probably not what you are just leaping for joy over spending your weekends doing.
So let me help you.
Now… I don’t know if I actually love to paint, or if because I learned how to paint before I could ride a bike, it’s just that far engraved into my personality.
Either way, I know how to paint, and I know how to do it well. Also, I don’t paint cats… or carpets.
Let me tell you just 3 of the many things I have learned about painting over the years:
Rather than sharing all the different levels of sheens – a quickie Google search will bring up 12,100,000 results in half a second – I will just say that you have a lot of choices! Anything from flat to high-gloss enamel.
Did you know? Many paint brands offer scuff prevention paint for high-traffic areas. If you’re tired of getting your hallway repainted year after year, there is hope! Any easy-to-clean and highly durable glimmer of hope.
There are many different levels of paint quality. You may look at the dollar comparison with gallons of paint and determine: why go with an $80 gallon of paint when I can just go with a $25 gallon of paint? That $25 gallon of paint seems very appealing when you’re on a tight budget, but the reality is that in the painting industry, cheaper is far more expensive.
That $25 gallon of paint typically requires more coats, which means that as well as the obvious extra time spent painting multiple coats, you will also be waiting a couple of hours in between each additional coat to reach proper coverage for your wall, ceiling, or trim. That $80 gallon of paint is worth the extra cost – two-coat coverage = fewer hours spent painting.
If you’re hiring a company, that savings on buying the $25 gallon of paint could result in hundreds of extra dollars on the labor side of things.
Sorry to break it to you. If your dog or cat loves you, you will probably end up painting them, too.
My first couple of projects painting professionally, I fell for my client’s animals. My clients would ask, “Do you want me to pen them up?”
My answer would be, “No. How dare you?” Jokingly, but still.
It only took once for my client’s fluffy, midnight black cat to have a bird-chasing party on the freshly painted white window sill for me to reverse my pet policy.
If you are painting your home, you have to be tough. You must be strong. You have to persevere through the whining behind the gate and the pawing at the crack at the bottom of a closed door.
If you fall for those cute little kitty paws or the dreadfully neglected puppy barks, you may end up spending the next hour scraping hair off your once beautiful masterpiece and repainting.
If this is not a feat you would like to attempt, call me. You can snuggle your fur babies in another room while I make your home spectacular.
If you have some painting projects you need help with, check out some of our past work!
We would be happy to answer any questions you have about the process.
We provide free estimates, and we price match our competitors’ estimates.
As always, have a beautiful day, and remember to smile at strangers!