Over the past year I had been painting my house and here are a few painting mistakes I think I would like to share to everyone so that you do not repeat them.
Before I start listing my painting mistakes, let me tell you that these painting mistakes had caused more delays in painting my kampung house, and they have also contributed to higher expenditure on my painting works as well.
That said, here’s my painting mistakes since I started painting.
Not sticking to one paint
I thought all white paint is similar, so as cost played a role in paint selection as I mentioned in my post about paint comparison, I started to swap paint brands when the colour is similar. This is very likely for white as I thought all basic white paint is the same regardless of brand.
I was wrong because Nippon, Smartop and TopPlus all presented different shades of white. Using different brands means the white is not the same, so I had to repaint at least one wall to ensure it doesn’t look too odd. If you ask me, I like TopPlus most for white because it comes up as clean or pure white.
Not opening pre-instaled lights, sockets or switches
Since the wiring for the house has been fully installed, with my electrician using silicone to close up gaps, I opted not to re-open the lights and sockets which had been installed before painting. Instead, I covered them with tape and hoped I could avoid more work when I painted.
Once painting was done and dry, I would peel the tap and this is when problems emerge. There are times, the tape also peeled away parts of the paint, and when I needed to re-fit the switches, lights or sockets in the future, there were obvious signs that the items had been opened and reattached, which is not a pretty sight.
Using masking tape
Masking tape is a local favourite for covering areas you’d want to avoid painting. It’s cheap and easy to apply. However, it also can dry up pretty quickly, causing the glue on the tape to stick to the wall or floor.
This can ony be removed with thinner and some slight scrapping, causing more work after painting. The best tape to use is the Nippon Painter’s tape.
Not covering areas which have different colour and paint
I had already installed the grill in my house and it was black. I also already painted the door in grey. The walls were painted later because it took more time. The problem is, when I painted the wall, little tiny drops ended on the surface of these already painted items and they are difficult to remove because they are everywhere.
Also, since the tiles were already installed, these little dots of paint also settled onto the times, making them uneven. They can be removed using thinner but that’s another unessary job created by this painting mistake.
Painting the small items first
This is sort of related to mistake above. In order to protect the wooden door, I decided to paint all the door first. This proved a mistake because when I painted the walls, I ended up accidentally hitting the doors with my rollers and brushes.
The number of incidents aren’t many, but they had caused me to re-paint the doors a couple more times to remove the marks.
Doing the wall edges last
The edge of the walls are best done first before one paints the whole wall. I did the edges last because that’s the most taxing and boring part of painting. This not only caused difficulty when painting the edges, but also cause the paint to appear uneven once dry.
Delaying repainting on every layer
When painting, it is advisable to run the roller in a ‘W’ route, for as long as possible on the wall. This ensures the paint covers all areas of the wall nicely. However, there’s instances that the paint may get too thick when I first painted and at times I allowed it to dry before I even up the layers.
This cause uneven painting finish which is hard to cover up despite putting up several more layers. The only way to remove such uneven paint is to scrap the thick paint and reapply a fresh coat of paint.
Conclusion of painting mistakes
As you can see and read, the problems above are actually avoidable, but I did it and it cost me time and money.
I hope my little sharing helped so that you can paint better. ‘Til my next post. Cheers!
