Painting tips!

[badgerread]

I have to decorate my new house from top to bottom before I move in. When I've decorated before I haven't prepped properly and my cutting in technique is awful.

Can you let me know your top tips?!

Prep all surfaces well first so you get the best finish you can. Frog tape is better than normal masking tape. If you put it round your skirting boards and door frames etc it makes cutting in much easier. Unscrew light switches and sockets rather than trying to paint round them. Get some decent brushes that don't lose loads of bristles as you're painting. I got on really well with some dulux branded ones which were slightly angle shaped and gave a good clean edge

Thanks bees!

Employ a painter and decorator. I'm not being awkward, I'm just awful and have wasted money and time over the years on crappy painting, definitely should have got someone in!

YY to what keeping bees said.

Decent quality paint, decent brushes and roller, step ladder that avoids you needing to over-reach. You can get extendable rollers which are great for ceilings and higher bits of walls.

Wash down all surfaces really well with sugar soap, fill in and sand cracks as necessary, get a proper wallpaper remover if you need to strip paper.

Tape edges with Frog tape to get a clean line. It's time consuming and tedious, but makes a huge difference to the finish.

I think it's technically wrong, but I always paint the main part of the surface before doing the edges, to save painting when I could have rollered.

Having a variety of different sized brushes really helps me. I even use a reallly thin brush ( you'd do pictures with) to get in fiddily corners.

Paint in daylight.

There's some great angled brushes in b&q which are for cutting in, plus surprisingly a larger brush head seems to give a neater finish than a smaller one (I find anyway) And definitely frog tape, it's amazing especially for darker colours where they meet white.