House Painting Tips That Will Save A lot Of Your Time and Effort

Nothing quite transforms a home and gives it a facelift on a budget such as a new paint job. Repainting your home is not only cosmetic but also protective as far a guarding your home against the elements and increasing its durability is concerned. The exterior and interior paint on your home in San Diego deteriorates over time, and only a professional repaint can restore its glamour.

Having said that, it’s important to note that painting your home can be a major project –whether you’re hiring a pro or going DIY. It can be costly and requires a lot of effort and time. In case you missed our article on cost-saving tips during house painting, read it {here}. Today, however, we want to share a few tips on how to save time and effort required to repaint your home. Have a look:

1. Thorough Preparation
   In an effort to save time and hassle, you might be tempted to skip some important surface preparation process. This is a major mistake. If you’re working on an exterior home painting in San Diego, you need to understand that preparation takes the biggest chunk of the entire painting process –and it’s extremely important to your how your results turn out.

   Chances are your walls have dirt, debris, stains, and loose old paint. Failing to properly clean the surface and remove all the residue will lead to uneven paint coats and paint failure shortly after painting. When the old loose paint that you painted over, comes off, it will take down with it some patches of your new paint coat. Depending on the extent of the paint failure, this can easily mean redoing the whole paint job.

2. Don’t Paint Over Damaged Walls.
   Other than cleaning and getting rid of surface residues, you should take a moment and asses your walls to see if there are any damages. Fix any splits, gaps, and cracks that might be on the walls. Such openings create the beginnings of paint cracking and form entry points for moisture that can start damaging your paint job just days after painting.

3. Don’t Skip The Primer
   Again, most DIY painters tend to skip applying the primer in an effort to save some time and energy. If you’re painting a home exterior that hasn’t been painted in a while, this move is self-defeating. Paint doesn’t stick well to bare surfaces, but it sticks well on primed surfaces. Applying the primer creates an even surface and increases paint adhesion for better coverage.
   In addition, stain blocking primers can prevent stains and old paint from bleeding through your new paint coat. And if you’re moving from a dark to a light color, tinting the primer will help to better cover and hide the old paint, and help your new paint colors to really show out.
   All these mean, once you’ve primed your surface, you will use fewer paint coats to achieve proper coverage. Also, you will be able to paint faster if the paint adheres properly to the surface with little effort. This can potentially save you the extra hours, if not days, that you would have spent without priming.

4. Be Wise In Your Paint Color Choice.
   As earlier hinted, moving from a dark to light paint color requires extra paint coats for sufficient coverage, even with the primer applied –and that means more time and labor. So, where possible, stick to the same color shade or avoid making drastic paint color changes.
   Additionally, if you can stick to at most two paint colors –that would save you lots of time and effort. Every time you need to switch from one paint color to the next, you have to temporarily stop everything, switch brushes, open and mix new paint cans and start all over again. And if you accidentally drip a different paint color on your already painted surface, correcting that takes time. If you’re short on time, you can’t afford to waste those minutes.

Bottom Line
Exterior painting can be a daunting task, but with a little planning a tweaking, you can save yourself some hassle and time without compromising the final quality. As a bonus tip, if you aren’t planning for it, we recommend that you hire a professional painting contractor. Pros have done this repeatedly, and they have the training, experience, and tools to complete a project much faster, and you don’t have to break a sweat.