Tips For Preparation Of Your Painting And Decorating

The Right Stuff

To do a good painting and decorating Preparation job you need the right tools for the job.

• A Hawk you can make yourself: Just a 9in square of ply screwed to a short length of broom handle.
• A Pointing Trowel is needed__ And it will be useful for other jobs later.
• An Old Paintbrush (always comes in handy)in any preparation.
• A Flat Stripper, for scraping off the old wallpaper and paint.
• A Chisel Knife (a narrow version of above)
• A Bolster (broad bladed chisel)
• A Metal Float to smooth the wet plaster into those cracks in the walls.

Repairing plaster cracks

With any wall preparation or plaster repair, hack away loose or damaged material with bolster and hammer. Brush away dust. Dampen broken surfaces.

Pick up plaster on under-side of trowel and press into hole, adding more until “not quite level”(a handy tip) with surrounding good plaster.

Scratch lines on the wet surface to provide a key for the finishing plaster

Sit down and have a cup of coffee as you leave it to harden.

When the plaster has hardened the top layer is smoothed on with a wet trowel or metal float, for plaster will stick to a dry blade (another handy tip).

Matching damaged edges and corners

Most easily damaged plaster is on external corners. If more than a small area is damaged, the problem is to match the level of the surrounding plaster with only one edge to rely on.

The answer is a batten longer than the damaged area, nailed top and bottom so the edge just lines up with plaster__Plaster up to it

When hard remove the batten carefully. (A handy tip when you nail the batten is to leave plenty of the nail protruding out)

Making ready for gloss paint

Preparation starts with Washing down walls with decorator’s soap, rinse clean; roughen old gloss paint with sandpaper so the new pain can grip.

Sound paint on woodwork need only be roughened; fill small holes and cracks with putty or patent filler.

A tip is to work upwards, keeping lamp upright, tackling awkward bits first and keep flame away from glass using chemical stripper around windows.

Preparation of metal frames

Metal windows to be repainted should be rubbed down with a wire brush, any lumps sanded off, and any rust spots sanded down and treated with one of the best rust cures you can find from your local DIY.

Whatever you do: don’t paint over rust! it will spread and force the paint off from underneath.

Loose putty should be cleaned out and new putty put in so that it is level with the metal;

gaps left here will mean moisture from condensation getting in, spoiling the paint and possibly starting more rust

Stripping old distemper

The tiresome job for the keen Do-It-Yourself decorator in an old house is stripping off layers of distemper, especially from ceilings.

Some distempers will wash off with warm water__ add a squirt of washing up liquid to a bucket of water; work a small patch at a time, sponge in one hand stripping knife on the other.

Make sure the floor is well protected as distemper makes a lot of mess.

When finished wash walls and ceiling with clean water.

Oil-bound distempers won’t come off so easily. If you must get them off and they don’t respond to prolonged soaking the only other way is to hire a steam stripper

So that`s a few tips on preparation, how about a few more on other aspects of painting and decorating.

Home Decorating made Easy

Painting And Decorating

Painting Tricks Of The Trade

Home Improvement