House Painting Tips

So this past weekend I decided to go over to friends house to help her paint her house. It wsa my first time painting on such a large scale and so I had to learn everything from the ground up. Below are some tips that I learned this week:

1. House paint is more durable in a glossy finish than in a flat finish. A glossy finish has a better “scrubability” rating than flatter finishes, but they also tend to reveal imperfections in the surface.

1. High use areas should be painted with higher gloss paint. Lower use areas can use eggshell or flat finishes.

Interior house paint is available in several finishes…

• Flat
• Eggshell
• Semigloss
• Gloss

You’ll need to measure the area to be painted in order to know how much interior house paint you’ll need.

Here’s how to figure out the area of your walls…measure how wide each wall is and add these. The area is the total width multiplied by the height of your walls.

Next, measure the areas covered by trim, windows, fireplaces, wallpaper, etc. If these areas end up being more than 10 percent of your painting area, subtract their total square footage.

Now, check the spread rate of your paint. This will be listed on the paint can. Take your square footage and divide by the spread rate listed on the paint can.

Latex interior house paint requires a brush with synthetic bristles. Nylon brushes are fine, but they can lose their stiffness in hot conditions. Brushes with polyester bristles keep their stiffness in the heat and also stand up to water.

If you’re painting with oil based paint, you’ll need a natural bristle brush. Only use an appropriate solvent to clean the paint from these brushes, however. If you try to clean oil based paint from a natural bristle brush with water, for one thing, it just won’t work…but you’ll ruin the brush.

As with everything else, follow the clean up instructions on your paint can label.

Before you buy a brush, pick it up and hold it. See how it feels. Test the bristles with your hand. If it feels cheap, try the next highest priced brush.

I am hoping that after I get my equity home loan That will be able to do some painting of my own. I am pretty optimistic since my friend got her new home from a bad credit home loan. She had some problem with debt a credit cards, but it all worked out for her in the end.