Hints for a successful paint job

Now that it's August, the ambitions of fall are looming. For example, you start noticing stuff that you successfully ignored through July. Like the dark basement paneling that depresses everyone, or the peeling paint in the laundry room, or the greasy streaks on the kitchen walls.

These sudden observations indicate stirrings of our most primal anxieties...Will the snow come early? Will we be able to put up enough food before the frost? Will the firewood last so we don't have to eat raw meat like that winter when Uncle Duncan went mental on account of the tapeworm?

Up the Wall

The primordial pressures of being human, especially being a Canadian human, include buttoning up one's dwelling for winter. But in this era of insulation and central heating, it's not survival issues that clamp themselves vise-like to your conscience, it's the aesthetic factors.

Shabby bits around the house may seem trivial in July. But by August, you realize you're going to be staring at those festering abominations through 8 months of indoor living. It's like having a zit on the end of your nose. It may only occupy .00001 percent of your total skin surface, but it's all anybody notices.

Paint Misbehavin'

Latex paint is deliverance in a can. Think of it as zit control for your walls. Used properly, it smoothes and beautifies. Used badly, it highlights surface eruptions and screams negligence.

Latex paint boasts low odour and easy cleanup, plus it gives you the effect of a remodel without doing anything other than repeating vertical motions with your arms 8000 times per room.

Here are some hints to make interior painting relatively painless.

• Two thirds of the job is prep. Nobody ever believes this. A good paint job is like a great romance. There's a lot of anguish and then finally you get some action. If you paint before you've gone to the trouble of setting things up properly, there won't be a happy ending.
• Execute your paint job in the following sequence: Ceiling, walls, windows, doors, and finally, baseboards.
• Buy good brushes. Crappy brushes kill resolve faster than beer. A good synthetic brush is tightly packed, springy and doesn't fan too much. I like the slant-cut brushes for their precision.
• Calculate the required amount of paint by figuring you'll get 300-400 square feet per gallon on a smooth wall or ceiling. If your surface is textured or stuccoed, think 200 square feet per gallon.
• Paint comes in increasing degrees of reflectivity: flat, eggshell, satin, semi-gloss, gloss. The flatter the paint, the better it disguises surface imperfections, but the harder it is to clean. Don't go any flatter than satin for bathrooms and kitchens.
• If your walls are discoloured by nicotine, cigarette or candle smoke, cooking residue or random foulness, scrub them with a mild solution of detergent, water and ammonia. Then rinse the surfaces with clear water (or the soapy residue on the wall will prevent paint from adhering). Follow with a stain-blocking primer.
• If you see rust-coloured spots on trim, pine pitch is bleeding through a previous paint job. Use plain white shellac or a shellac-based stain-blocking primer before painting, or it'll just happen again. Shellac is the only thing that will stop pitch spots in trim or plywood from blooming through paint.
• Kill mildew with a solution of bleach and water or a commercial mildew remover; then rinse it well (even if the cleaners say you don't have to) and let it dry before following up with a stain-blocking latex primer.
• If you're covering glossy paint, scuff it with sandpaper to help the new paint adhere. Don't use black iron oxide or 'wet/dry' sandpaper - little specks of the abrasive get caught in the water-based latex and turn into tiny flecks of rust.
• Sand sharp edges on trim before applying paint. A really sharp edge won't hold paint. Sensible people have freaked trying to paint sharp edges.
• After washing and/or applying primer, caulk cracks and joints. Use spackle to repair dings and divots. Sand spackle smooth after a few hours; then touch it up with primer or it will suck paint at a different rate than the primed or previously painted surface around it, and you'll notice that spot forever.
• Get your primer tinted dark if you've chosen a dark shade of paint.
• For even coverage, roll paint on the wall in a 3-foot tall 'M' shape, then fill in the 3-foot square without reloading the roller. Reload and move on to the next 3-foot square.
• If you take a break, drape a damp rag over the roller tray or open paint can so it doesn't skin over like Jell-O Pudding.
• Some magazines say, "Simply cover your paint-covered brush or roller with plastic wrap and chuck it in the freezer overnight." That's a load of hooey. Latex doesn't freeze well. It goes gummy. Maybe that's why the can says, "Store paint where the temperature is above freezing." Technically, a can of latex paint can survive 3 freeze-and-thaw cycles, but who has the nerve for that kind of risk.