Repainting the whole interior before we move in?

mildredalien

We're in the process of buying our first home - it's been rented out for years so is quite shabby throughout. We're hoping to have a month between completion and moving out of our rented place where we can do some work to the property before we move in and fill it with furniture.

The floors are our first priority as the carpets upstairs are grubby and worn and the laminate downstairs is coming apart.

The paintwork is also in a pretty rough state and has stains as well as being a very unappealing to us shade of magnolia. Our current debate is whether we should give the whole house a lick of paint to get it looking decent before we move in? We will then plan to tackle one room at a time 'properly' which could involve repainting rooms that have been fairly recently done. However who knows how long it will take to get round to the whole house!!

What would you do?

If you were going to repaint a whole house to freshen it up what colour would you choose? I'd think it would be easiest for us to choose one shade to whack over most rooms.

spadoosh

Cheapest paint colours are white (clinical) and magnolia (30 a day smokers yellow), theyll also sell these in 10l tubs which youll need for a whole house.

Seems to me like your going about it the wrong way a bit.

Always start at the top. So paint ceilings, walls, woodwork and then do your floors/carpets. Nothing more annoying than spilling some gloss on a new carpet.

Could you not cope with the carpets untill youve painted everywhere then get them changed?


ETA, i wouldnt paint the whole house then repaint (youll soon learn painting is not like it is in the adverts!). Id just deal with what was there until i was ready to paint it. If i had to, i would do it in white as its cheapest.


Congrats on the house btw!

missbiggles1

I'd move in and then decorate, room by room, when I could see the rooms in different lights and with my own furniture in. I certainly wouldn't waste the time and money to do it twice, I'd just give it all a really good clean.

phil24_7

I wouldn't bother. Your ideas and priorities will change once your in and you will end up doing things twice as well as doing things that don't need doing. Our house looked like a music video for the Beetle's Sergeant Pepper album and we tackled it over the first few months of ownership. e then lived in it for a while before starting major works.

If you have the budget you can do the master bedroom and maybe the lounge fully before you move (should be doable in a month unless you are doing structural work or major renovations) and then tackle the next most important room to you and so on.

As long as finances allow you could get the whole house done in a couple months after moving in so long as you aren't tackling the kitchen or bathrooms at the same time.

Many on here would be able to renovate the whole house in a month but for most people this target is a bit hopeful.

Regards
Phil

Bubblecat

When we moved into our previous house it was pretty shabby and needed modernising throughout but knew it would take a number of years to to get the whole house sorted so decided to do a temporary repaint of the house (other than the hallway/stairs/landing as that was too big a job so only wanted to do it the once).

I'm not a fan of magnolia but bought a load of cheap trade magnolia paint. It made a huge difference and just highlighted how dingy the place was before What looked like quite a bright yellow in the living room and dining room was actually quite dark - magnolia looked white next to it. It made the rooms feel so much bigger and also made the place feel 'cleaner' if that makes sense.

I agree with pp though - you are best to put flooring down last once you've done all the painting. Hire a carpet cleaner for the day to clean up the dirt and buy some cheap rugs to cover any unsightly worn areas.

mildredalien

Thanks all, I think we were just getting carried away by the thought of being able to decorate!! We want to tackle our bedroom properly first so at least we have one nice room to retreat to while in decoration mode, so we'll just start there and see how we get on before we move in.

The thinking behind floors first was to do it before we move any furniture in to reduce the amount of hefting stuff around that we'd need to do. We want laminate put down in the living room/dining room and then probably the same carpet all through upstairs, so in my head it would be fairly quick to do if we don't have any furniture in the way.

I'm not the tidiest though so I can definitely see posts asking for tips on removing paint from carpets in my future if we do it that way!!

spadoosh

The only way to get paint out of carpets is to cut it out or not let it on in the first place.

Starting in the bedroom sounds look a good plan.

With carpets, ive always found the carpet fitters are more than happy to move furniture around the room whilst laying it, so not too much to get out of the way for them. In the hallway you rarely keep too much furniture so that shouldnt need doing too soon.

Putting laminate down early on isnt that bad (just be careful if you have a textured effect) as most of the time you can just wipe it down or scrape stuff off.

Jonesya

This might seem unusual, but the first room I'd paint is the garage - couple of coats of white emulsion, or masonry paint on the walls, floor paint for the concrete floor. Makes a huge difference to using the garage vs. unpainted brick/concrete block. Do it once when you move in, then probably never again.

It's easy to do when it's empty before you've filled it with stuff, but if you don't do it then, could you ever be bothered to empty it in the future? Particularly as a lot of what you'd need to shift, you wouldn't want inside the house.

mildredalien

Good point spadoosh, perhaps we could get new laminate down earlier but focus on painting upstairs before we replace the carpet.

Unfortunately there's no garage so we'll just have to bear that tip in mind for a future house

Callie22

When we bought our house about eighteen months ago we painted it all white before we moved in. It was grubby, tired and we had walls painted all sorts of colours - yellow, lilac, mint green, and faded wallpaper that was the colour of sadness in the main bedroom. We need to do quite a lot of work on the house and realistically that's going to take a long time, so we painted everywhere white just so that it looks cleaner and fresher whilst we save for the work. We didn't bother replacing the carpets as we'll have to do some work on the floors too and it seemed pointless to spend money now on carpets that will probably end up ruined when we start the proper work, so we just bought a carpet cleaner and gave each room two or three good goings-over once we'd finished painting. A darn good clean, window-washing, the white paint and the carpet cleaning made a huge difference and made the house feel much better.

Just as an aside, I personally prefer white to magnolia, but that's probably just a reaction to too many years living in rented houses where everything is magnolia and beige ...

CathA

When we moved in to our present house, everything was ok ish as in livable, but everything needed re-doing, plus a few walls knocked down, change the windows etc.

Everything was covered in woodchip (screams quietly!) and the lounge, stairs and landing is painted purple. We have purple carpets, purple curtains and they left their suite which is......purple ish!

We knew there was a lot we wanted to do but painting/decorating it twice was not one of them! We moved into the second bedroom, did our room and then moved onto to a different room and so on.

Two years on, we're about to start on the lounge and I've been joyfully ripping off the woodchip in the lounge today. Funnily enough, my daughter idly mentioned the other day that she was surprised we hadn't painted over the purple in the last few years. Yes, like I've got time!