Have you painted the entire interior of you house? Please come and tell me how you did it without going mad

[headfairy]

We cannot possibly afford a painter and decorator, but our house looks terrible. The walls are filthy, covered in pen marks and chipped paint. I'm desperate to reprint but it's so daunting. It's not a massive house, typical Victorian three bed, but I work full time (3days a week, 13 hour shifts) and both my children are preschool (though ds starts reception in Sept) so they're around all day.

Is it even possible?

Cling film or poly bag round the wet brushes and rollers saves you washing them out if you are using them the next day. Obviously you have to clean them when you are finished.

Sh77 are you sure he didn't get his decimal point in the wrong place and it was £1200? I just got my entire 4 bed barn conversion painted for £2000! You should see the height of out ceilings.. That's insane!

I tend to do all our painting (well, other than hall/stairs/landing which is big and too high!).

Most recently I did a bedroom in 2 days but that included the woodwork (skirting boards, doorframe, window and built in bookcase) as well as the ceiling and walls.

Those 2 days weren't flat-out either, probably about 5 hours per day.

I basically said to DP "the weather looks rubbish this weekend, I'm going to paint this bedroom so can you deal with the DCs, food etc".

Next plan is the bathroom!

yes baby wipes are a God send!!!!!! They're fab for skerting boards!

smalltown you have inspired me ! was going to save up and get it done but think I may have a go now.

Haha, definitely won't be downing too much wine! What do you do about painting your own bedroom? You obviously can't leave all the furniture in the middle of the room... Do you do that one first or last? We don't have a spare room to decamp to.

When I've done bedrooms I've moved as much stuff out into the hallway as I can (luckily its quite big), piled some stuff in the other bedrooms and, when we did our bedroom, dismantled the bed and put our mattress on the sofa bed and slept there.

When I've done the DCs bedrooms they've just slept in each others rooms so its been a big adventure and a bit of fun. DS's room is quite small but rather than dismantle his mid-sleeper bed I just put it in the middle of the room (with loads of stuff under it), covered it with an old sheet and worked around it.

Its chaos for a few days but its do-able.