First job was painting. I figured this was something we could actually do ourselves, especially as my brother and dad could be roped in to assist. And to be fair, given the state of the previous paint job, pretty much anyone could have done a better job. It seemed they had taken a rather abstract approach to the paint job. Random colour walls, where they made mistakes they just left the paint there (think red brush marks on a yellow ceiling) and possibly worst of all, they seem to have disliked white light switches, so they just painted over. Brings to mind the Rolling Stones - "I see a red door and I want it painted black" - just substitute in light switch and brown. Or red. Or green. Or in one case, part green and part brown.
These are some of the before shots -
The red wall in the lounge room. Just painted on the ceiling and left it there. The roof doesn't give the full idea as it was a kind of yellow orange.
The opposite side of the lounge room - this one kind of 70's faux wood panelling. Took me a long time to realise all the walls had the same texture "panelling" but were just painted different colours - the two ends are both white here.
So you can just about see the painted over light switch here. Just brushed right over. Turns over that was a type of vinyl paint - which had to be peeled off with the help of paint stripper before we could paint over. Oh and great dark brown door frames.
This one shows a bit better the yellow roof. And more of the dark brown trimmings. Including cornices, which was just quad.
This is the dining room. Not sure what was going on with the random yellow/brown paint.
The spare bedroom. Okay this was once I'd started painting the wall, it wasn't striped before. But it was yellow.
The master bedroom - which is actually still the same. We never did get to paint there (well, not yet). I thought the crazy colour scheme was kind of cool at first - bit over it now. So that is grey ceiling in the main arch, white on one end, pale kind of mint green over the balcony, and dark green on the other end and over the ensuite.
This is the opposite wall of the main bedroom. And that (although possibly a bit hard to see) is the three quarter brown/quarter green light switch. At least it is white now, even if the wall is still green.
And after our extensive paint job - here are some of the after shots
The lounge room - white ceiling, white cornices and all the same colour on the walls. So much nicer!
Slightly patchy ceiling - but this was after four coats and we were over it.
Check it out - white light switches! (installed by our electrician, not a magical paint job) That isn't patchy paint colour on the wall, it's the reflection of light from our new chandelier.
So I hope you agree that it is much better! The colour we used was Taubman's Twill - a light grey although it seems much bluer than I expected. Could be that the outside bright blue exterior paint reflects in.
I'm sure that anyone who has ever decided to paint a room has probably sworn never to do it again. I got out of it a bit by enlisting my brother to paint the ceilings - which he did (not exactly without complaints but with not too much issue) and also dragging in my mum, dad, niece and my husband as well. But it is a long job, and the prep work is the worst. Some of our efforts still need a bit of fixing. We have painted that main arch white now, but the other doorways are still waiting.
A couple of suggestions I would make to anyone who wants to paint - especially a whole house -
1. Undercoat. We didn't bother with the first ceiling, and regretted it almost immediately when we needed to put 4 coats of ceiling white on, and it was still patchy. I thought it was saving money not bothering but I think in the end you just buy more of the other paint. The other rooms turned out much better with the undercoat.
2. Buy good quality roller covers and an extension handle. I didn't realise until later in the painting job that there are different types of material (with different thickness of nap) for different types of paint (semi gloss, gloss etc) and even differences between the same fabrics. Again, my earlier purchases were cheaper but you get what you pay for. That said I don't think you need to buy super expensive ones, but just a bit better quality.
3. Prep, prep, prep. It's boring and it's hard but the more you sand and smooth and clean up the walls before you paint the better it looks. As the time wore on we got a bit more lax with the prep and again, those are the walls I now look at and think we need to redo.
4. Clean up your brushes and roller covers straight away. This might sound really obvious and stupid but after a long day painting and then going home to where we were renting the last thing I ever felt like was cleaning up the brushes and equipment. But even if I "put them in to soak" if there were any bits sticking out that dried, the rollers were ruined. We ended up throwing out a few brushes and roller covers because the paint dried and just could never come out. So clean them up unless you have unlimited funds for new equipment (and don't care at all about waste and the environment!)
In terms of costs - painting is at least reasonably inexpensive. It does still add up though by the time you buy the brushes, roller covers, masking tape, sand paper, paint scraper (also handy for smoothing out the walls) and the paint itself. To be really honest I don't recall how much paint we went through. At least 12L ceiling white, 8L undercoat, and 20L plus of the colour. A 10L tin of Taubman's Endure is around $160 or so.
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