Painting Walls and Ceilings for Beginners

Hi guys. Today I’m talking about painting walls and ceilings for beginners in a house. And of course as soon as you start talking about painting walls and ceilings, it naturally leads you to door frames and window frames as well. But realistically, there actually isn’t that much else you are likely to paint when doing a big paint job in a house. So why is it that you may want to start painting walls and ceilings in your house? Well other than for your own comfort in being able to live in a house that has an uplifting new feel about it, painting walls and ceilings is one of the easiest and fastest ways of giving your house interior a makeover to improve it’s equity and resale value. So to be able to know how to go about painting walls and ceilings effectively and efficiently can save you money because you don’t have to hire professionals and it provides you with a skill that you can use later to increase value on any property.

Now when I say it’s easy, I really mean it’s straight forward – anyone can do it but no, it’s not really easy as such. It does take a lot of work and painting walls and ceilings in an average size room will take you at least a day. So that may give you an idea of how long it will take painting walls and ceilings throughout your house. This assumes of course that you have excellent conditions to start with. If you have everything you need to begin painting walls and ceilings and the walls are clean and ready to be painted i.e. they don’t have paint falling off them that needs to be scraped back, they don’t have cigarette stains on them, they don’t have holes in them that need to be plastered and the list goes on. So where does my experience come from. Well I was fortunate enough to have a tradesman as a brother and so from the age of 15, I was helping him with renovations every spare weekend. I helped him with everything as a beginner, installing bamboo hardwood laminate flooring, building walls, installing kitchens and of course this included painting walls and ceilings as well as house exteriors. Since then I have painted at least 11 houses throughout that I can think of off the top of my head. So how do we go about painting walls and ceilings in our house.

Exploring Your Paint

The first thing to do is go down to your local hardware store (that’s what it’s called in Australia) and have a look at the countless paint colour swatches of all the different paint manufacturers. Grab a hold of several that you think would be nice in the various rooms of your house keeping in mind several things. Firstly, what is the purpose of painting your house. If it is to improve the value so that you can sell it and get a higher price, you should consider colours that are subtle and will go with a wide range of furnishings. You may have a wonderful artistic streak and may be keen to show the incoming buyers, by painting walls and ceilings in tasteful but unusual colours. While it may be a great thing to have a maroon feature wall in the living room, if it doesn’t go with the buyers furniture, it may be enough to put them off buying and the whole exercise of paiting walls and ceilings in the house has been a waste of time. Of course if your purpose is solely for your own comfort, then you only need to keep in mind whether you will like the outcome and if the paint will go with your furnishings.

Deciding on Your Paint

Once you have decided on several colours, obtain colour cards for them that you can take home. Put these up against the walls, compare them to the furnishings, do whatever you need to decide which colour is going to be best in each room and whether painting walls in one colour throughout the house will be better, or painting walls with different colours for different rooms. You also need to decide what colour you want to paint the ceiling, although white is standard and this is what I’ve used in all my interior paint jobs. If you get to a point where you are just not quite sure, it may be worth popping back down to the hardware store and picking up a small tester tin of paint with a small paint brush, taking it back home and painting a small square on a wall and seeing how it looks. Keep in mind that you haven’t used any undercoat at this point so if the original colour of the wall is quite strong it may alter the resultant colour of the test paint.

Getting your supplies ready for Painting Walls and Ceilings

So the next step is to head back down to the hardware store and buy some white undercoat paint and some top coat paint for painting walls. The topcoat paint comes as white paint and you take it up to the paint service desk and they mix up the colour or colours you have chosen. If you are painting ceilings white, you should be able to pick up a white ceiling paint that acts as both an undercoat and a top coat. This saves time and inconvenience later on as you don’t have to wash brushes etc when going from undercoat to top coat – you can use the same brushes. Hang on – don’t we have to wash the brushes between coats? Well many might but I like to do things as fast and conveniently as possible so I’ll show you some ways later on where this isn’t necessary.
Next you need a bunch of supplies that include:

• Sugar Soap – I have no idea whether they call it this in America (or other places in the world) but it’s a cleaner that is perfectly suited for removing dirt and stains from walls before painting them.
• 2+ Buckets – for soaking paint brushes in and for holding sugar soap for cleaning.
• Plastic paint tins – I like to grab several of these as they are so handy, just the right size for holding paint while you are painting walls and ceilings, have a handle and for just $2 each, save me having to look around the house for an inferior copy.
• Paint brushes – I like to get all mine medium sized. What is medium sized – well if you look in the selection you’ll see paint brushes where the bristles are really thick and ones where the bristles are really thin. Take the medium ones. Also get the brand that is placed about middle on price. If you get the cheap ones, the bristles come out while you are painting and get caught on the walls and ceilings. You then get paint all over your fingers trying to pick them off.
• Paint roller, roller handle, paint tray and extension handle – For painting walls and ceilings centre area. You may want to get disposable trays which can come in handy for someone like me who hates washing paint off trays but I have a more economical solution that I’ll tell you about later. You may also want to get some sort of tool for cleaning the roller. Once again I hate cleaning rollers and they can take up to 15 minutes to get all the paint out of them. But with one of these tools, and there are several designs, you can clean up a roller in less than a minute. The one I use is a plastic tube that fits snuggly over the roller. A hose is attached to one end and when turned on, forces the paint out of the roller. It’s the best thing I’ve found since sliced bread.
• Drop sheets – I prefer old sheets or tarpaulins from home but if necessary you can get them here. You use these to put on the floor and furniture to stop any paint dripping on them while you are painting walls and ceilings. You may think you won’t drop any paint – I guarantee you will within the first 10 minutes.
• Sand paper and a sanding block – to prepare any doors, door frames or window frames that have peeling paint.

Once you’ve bought all this and taken it home, it’s time to get started.

Preparation for painting walls and ceilings

Next you need to prepare the walls and ceilings. If there is any paint peeling off the walls or ceilings, give them a light sanding to remove any remaining paint that may come off. If any remaining paint looks like it is there to stay then just leave it. The main thing is to remove paint that may come off after you have painted the wall or ceiling, taking with it the new paint and leaving a nice ugly hole in your paint job. Next use Sugar Soap to clean any stains, dirt or grease off the walls. Even if the walls look clean, give them a go with the Sugar Soap and you may be surprised at how dirty they actually are. Often we just become used to the colour they have become. To use the Sugar Soap, mix it up in a bucket according to the directions and wearing gloves, use a damp cloth to wipe over the wall. Then use a damp cloth rinsed in clean water to wipe off any residue. Let the walls dry before painting walls. If there are any holes in the walls you will need to buy some filler to fill these holes. In Oz it’s called spakfilla or woppy. You get this at a hardware store as well. You can buy this ready made and it usually comes with it’s own applicator. If the hole is big and all the way through the wall, you may need to get a professional plasterer in first to fix the hole.

One situation that can be a nightmare painting walls and ceilings is when there has been a smoker constantly smoking in the room. You’ll find this may have left a nicotine stain on the ceiling and possibly on the walls as well. Hopefully if it’s not too bad you will be able to remove it with the Sugar Soap. I painted a room in a house about a year ago (see photo) where the room was used as an office and the occupant sat in the same position each day chain smoking. This had left a huge stain on the wall and on the ceiling. The original paint had soaked up the nicotine and after having washed the wall and ceiling 5 times where the stains were, they had still not completely come off. In this situation I had to buy undercoat paint specially made to stick to walls that had nicotine stains. Even then I still had to use three coats of undercoat to cover the stain where I would normally only use two coats.

Finally we get started Painting Walls and Ceilings

Once the walls have been washed and dried, you now get to start painting walls and ceilings. Hey that’s what we’re here for! Start with the first undercoat on the ceiling. Then the first undercoat on the walls. If the original ceiling colour was white then you do one top coat of white on the ceilings to finish them off. You may want to do a second undercoat on the walls to make sure there is none of the original colour showing through. Once this is the case you can do the first top coat of the walls and then the second top coat. If you are painting doors, door frames or window frames, paint them before applying either top coat to the walls. In other words the top coats for the walls are done last.
The reason for this is you don’t want to do them first and then have paint drip down on them from painting either the ceiling or door or window frames.

So start by opening your white ceiling undercoat paint and stirring it with a flat wooden stirrer. Stir it in a round and round and up down motion for about 5 minutes. Then pour it into a paint tin. Grab a paint brush, dip it in and start painting around the edge of the ceiling to a width of about 4 inches. Sorry, I forgot to mention you’ll need a ladder.
That was easy. Now you have two choices – if you are going to have a short break but then continue in another room, you can wrap the bristles of the brush in cling wrap or a plastic bag and it will keep the paint from drying. If you are stopping for the day, then wash the brush out in a bucket of clean water. Once washed soak it in another bucket of clean water overnight. (Although if you really want to keep your brushes in perfect shape, then you should soak them in water whenever you have a break – I’m just in too much of a hurry to be bothered shaking the water out). If you have soaked them and are about to use them again – make sure you shake all the water out by lifting the brush above your head and pulling it down with as much force as possible. Do this until hardly any drops of water come out. Note also that the water that comes out is tainted with paint so do it over grass or bushes where you don’t mind there being splatters of very light coloured paint. (Colour – that’s the right way to spell it by the way ☺
Now it’s time to roller the ceiling. Remember earlier I mentioned an economical way of protecting your paint roller tray from getting dirty. Well put your tray in a plastic bag big enough to completely wrap the tray. Then pour some paint into the paint tray on top of the plastic. In this way the paint tray is protected from the paint. Put the paint roller handle on the roller and roll the roller in the paint. Then just go to it rolling it over the ceiling. Start at one side and go to the other, replenishing the paint on the roller as it starts to run out. Try to keep the paint as even as possible but small lines that appear will not be seen once the paint has dried. Once finished, if you are having a meal break and then going to paint another ceiling in a few hours, just put the roller in a plastic bag and seal it to keep the paint wet – saves having to clean the roller. And fold the plastic bag holding the paint tray back over the paint in such a way that it covers the paint. This will keep the paint in the tray from drying. If you are having a longer break e.g. overnight then clean the roller and throw out the paint left in the plastic bag covering the paint tray.

And that’s basically it. The only difference when painting the walls is that for each coat, you not only go around the edges of the walls with a paint brush, you also paint the corners and around the window and door frames. Otherwise each coat is the same as that explained for the ceiling above.

Another quick word of advice – don’t bother using masking tape. For example, you may want to use masking tape on the ceiling edge when painting the walls to stop wall paint getting on the ceiling and to keep a straight line. Or you may put it on the skirting boards to stop wall paint getting on them. In my experience, masking tape will just pull off with bits of the dried paint you have just applied and is more trouble than it’s worth. You are better off just using your steady hand and not worrying too much if it’s not a perfectly straight line. You’ll be surprise that what looks like huge imperfections in your paint job now, you will not even notice in a week’s time.

If you want to know more about painting walls and ceilings for beginners have a look at interior house painting for selling your house. Hope all of this has helped.