Refurbishment

von

Hi, not great at this DIY milarkey so need some guidance. If I want to have a new carpet but the room and skirting board also needs painting which do I have done first?

MaggieBaking

The first thing you need to do is to prepare the walls. If they are in a good clean condition then you can go ahead, but if there are a few holes they will need filling (with filler), or if it is dirty you will need to wash with something called sugar soap to degrease them.

The next thing to do is "cutting in" - that's going around the edges of a large area you want to paint with a paintbrush if you are going to use a roller (a roller will get you best finish for an inexperienced decorator. So if you want to paint the ceiling in white, use white paint and a 2" paintbrush and go around all the edges of the room with white paint. Then use a roller all over as far to the edge as you can go (which can't be all the way to the edge - that's why you do cutting in.)

When I do it I do all the preparation, then I sand all the skirting and the door frames (and clean up any dust from that).

Then cutting in ceiling > Paint ceiling. Do this twice. Then cutting in walls (paint edges up to skirting, the ceiling, around light switches, the edges around the window). Do this twice. Then paint the walls.

Then paint the skirting and door frames.

Certainly do this before a new carpet, that way you don't have to worry about any edges. When you do the skirting it will be a lot easier if you can pull the carpet back from the edges to give them a proper coat of paint.

If you use your old carpet, it wont matter if you pull up the edges, and it wont matter if you paint the ceiling and get roller splashes on the floor. Otherwise you would need to use a large dustsheet to cover the carpet, and you wouldn't be able to paint the skirting without getting paint on it.

You will get a much better finish if you do 2 coats. Some paint and some colours will need 3 coats.

von

Thank you so much for your advice MaggieBaking - extremely helpful for a novice like me.