The Handy Homeowner Girl

Once you’ve chosen your colors, it’s time to head back to the hardware/paint store and pick up your paint and supplies.  When I painted my townhouse, I went to my local Lowe’s, but there can be a lot of benefit to going to a store specializing in paint – if you’re working on a special project (such as any faux finish) or if you want to talk to an expert about how many coats of paint you might need or what primers they recommend, it’s best to check out a paint store.  The people who work there are experts and in my experience, are always helpful – when I painted my bedroom at my parents’ house with a faux finish a few years ago, my local paint store was invaluable.

Here's how the faux finish turned out - thanks to help from my local paint store!

But for this last painting whirlwind, I headed to Lowe’s and started at the paint counter. I handed over my paint samples and told them how much paint I wanted and then headed to the other aisles to pick up my supplies while my paint was being mixed.

And here’s where I’ll insert two words of caution – 1) Before you go to pick up your paint, decide which rooms you’re going to paint and buy the paint AS NEEDED.  I bought all of my paint at once which was mostly not a problem because I painted almost my entire house in a two-week period.  However, the two bathrooms ended up being projects that I put off and that meant my paint wasn’t as in good shape after sitting in a closet for about six months.  Although it worked out fine, I definitely recommend deciding how much time and energy you have for painting, and then prioritizing the paint jobs accordingly.  2) Once you’ve decided which rooms you’re painting, know the dimensions of the rooms!  In fact, it helps to have this written down somewhere anyway and keep it with you whenever you’re home shopping (or maybe all the time).  It’s frustrating to be out somewhere thinking, I could pick up those blinds today, if only I knew the dimensions of the windows!  And even when you think you’ll just remember, you never do - I’ve found when it comes to my house, I’ve always got so much on my mind that I never remember the little details! 

The size of your room will have an impact on how much paint you need, as will the type of mouldings you have, and how many windows and doors - for a paint calculator, check out Lowe’s.  I guesstimated the amount of paint I would need, with some input from my parents and the Lowe’s paint people, and for the most part, I was spot on.  However, I really had to stretch the last of the paint in my kitchen, so especially when you’re dealing with paint mixed on the spot, you don’t want to end up having to get it re-mixed and hoping that there aren’t any slight color variations.  Plus, it’s nice to have paint left over that you can use for touch ups (like the time I accidentally got red hair dye on the wall in the bathroom and only painting over it was going to make it better).

So let’s use my bedroom as an example – it’s 15 x 11.5 feet. I have two windows (one is smaller than the other), one bedroom door, and two closets with sliding doors.  I got two gallons of paint and did three coats (remember, I was painting it a dark eggplant color, so to get the coverage I needed, I needed more paint).  In this case, or in the case of covering up a dark colored wall (like I had to do in the living room to paint light blue over dark red), it’s advisable to get a tinted primer.  These aren’t sold on their own at Lowe’s, but need to be mixed.  Pick up the primer you want to use, and then talk to the painting experts about tinting it – this helps to alleviate the need for endless coats of paint. You don’t have to use a primer if you don’t want to – I did downstairs, but not in my bedroom – but be prepared to have to put in extra time painting multiple coats if you don’t.

So besides primer and paint, what else did I need?
- 2 paintbrushes: I got two so that if I painted one room and wanted to move on to the next, I could rinse one paintbrush and leave it to dry while using the other one.
- Paint roller & roller 3-pack: I got the three pack roller for the same reason that I got two paintbrushes – it’s easier to clean and let one dry while you’re using another one.  Plus, I never seem to be able to get them super clean, so I used one for darker paint and the other for the lighter paint.  As for rollers, some people use the roller on the end of an extension arm always (like you may have seen on some home shows). I just used the roller as is, got up on my stepladder to paint the top of the room, and it worked great for me.
- Stepladder: Unless you’re ridiculously tall (and I’m 5′9″), this will come in handy on a regular basis.  But a word of caution – a LOT of home accidents happen on stepladders, and I almost fell off of mine while painting a room (despite being cautious) so always be careful.
- Paint tray & liners: Having a paint tray is a necessity if you’re going to be using a roller, and I’ve found the liners make clean-up so much easier – no washing paint trays!
- The HANDy paint pail and liners: This was one of my best purchases thanks to a recommendation from my dad – with these, you pour the paint into the liner (keeping the pail clean for easy clean-up) and you can hook the handle right over your hand as you’re painting.  The best part? There’s a magnet inside the pail to grab onto your paint brush so you can move around easily without losing the paint brush in paint or having to hold it in your other hand.
- Drop cloths of some kind: This can take any form really, as long as you have something big to cover the floor or the section of the floor you’re working near.  In my case, I was doing most of my painting before the new carpet was put in, so I wasn’t too concerned about getting paint on the floor.  I still put a drop cloth (I’d gotten a few from uHaul when I was moving) under my paint can and rolling tray, as well as over any furniture I couldn’t move far enough away, so that any spills would be soaked into that instead of the carpet.  But I can’t emphasize enough how important covering the floor is – even if you’re careful, flecks of paint always fly off of rollers and if you’re clumsy like me, you’re likely to bump into your can of paint at least once, no matter how careful you are.  So cover the floors!!
- Extension pole: Depending on what you’re painting, you may need an extension pole.  My stairway ceiling went from the first floor to the top of the second floor, so short of building scaffolding or hiring professionals, an extension pole attached to my roller was the next best thing. 

I definitely needed an extension rod for my roller to paint this!

As you can see from that picture, a roller with an extension pole worked great to paint this part of the hallway.  However, you can’t roll right up to the ceiling – so what’s a girl to do?  I used a paint edger.  Some people might recommend these for edging every room, but I’ve found that they soak a little bit of paint in, which then ends up on the ceiling.  This was still the case when I edged the hallway, but I had to put my perfectionist tendencies aside, realize that most people never look to the top of my hallway anyway, and know that unless I wanted it professionally done, I would have to deal with the less-than-perfect look.  Since I can reach the top of the walls in the rest of the house with a step ladder, I chose to cut in those myself instead. 

Up close - not so pretty

But from far away, you almost can't tell that it's not perfect!

That covers all of the supplies I picked up before painting.  Some people also like to use blue tape or masking tape to give them a sharp edge when painting, but I’m not a big fan.  I’ve found that no matter how well I press it down when painting, some of the paint always bleeds through.  I’m a careful painter, so I can cut in and create a straight line myself with minimal trouble.  I did use blue tape in my kitchen though, when I needed to create a false boundary between my kitchen and dining room, ending the blue paint and starting the tan.  On a flat surface, which the wall was, it worked great.

In the next post, I’ll finally get into prepping the walls and painting!