Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Sappho
BUILDING
Walls
When building a showing wall, it is advisable to create a shadow gap at the bottom of the wall: it helps with painting, and evens out the appearance of the floor surface. It only needs to be up to 18mm from the floor.
To make your shadow gap, place offcuts of wood of the required height on the floor at the joins, and rest the plasterboard/MDF on these to fix. Use tapered-edge plasterboard so that you can tape and join seams. For plasterboard or plastered walls, a plaster filler is always the way to go to cover seams. It is much easier to do than you are led to believe, especially over smaller areas. Mix it like casting plaster, use it before it goes off, and have your end finish in mind. Don’t be intimidated. We are artists – we can do this stuff. Two coats of plaster, with sanding in between, should do the trick. Polyfilla is great for smaller holes or cracks – using the white stuff will always be quicker for over-painting.
When building MDF walls, it is preferable to have a chamfer on both meeting edges, creating a triangle to be filled. You need to do the first fill with a two-part filler, then sand it back. Minor blemishes can be resolved with Polyfilla.
Decorators Caulk is a cost-effective wall filler which can be painted over almost immediately (unlike other fillers which need time to dry). This means last minute rehangs are possible. However it is not sandable so you have to do a very neat job. Non-professional: seams in walls can be covered with tape, but you are always going to see it. The best is watercolour tape, which you wet first, as this is designed to resist wrinkling on drying.
Painting
If the wall is newly built and you are painting onto MDF or plasterboard, mix about 20% water into your paint. The surface absorbs the water readily so it makes a good first coating, preventing freckling on drying.
When painting a wall, use newspaper or cardboard to cover the floor – the paint dries quicker than on something like plastic. Check your feet before you step off the protective covering. If you spill paint/tread it into the floor, clean it up immediately. Put your tub of paint and equipment onto something with wheels so that you can roll it along with you and don’t have to keep moving to get it. A pallet/heavy board on a pallet truck is nice and wide for all your paint, rollers and trays. Always use a paintbrush (approx 30mm wide) first, to prepare the edges and awkward corners, then roll over the top. Roll all paint out evenly. Buy a Purdy’s roller and brush and you can keep it for years, IF you clean it properly.
If you buy a cheap, nasty roller, it will only be good for one or two sessions, so why even bother? A good quality extension pole will help to give purchase whilst doing a large area. Even if you can reach without it, the job will be better and quicker in the end. Generally stick to an up-down motion when rolling and only go horizontal for awkward bits. Make sure to blend in wet paint strips from the edge of the roller. Be methodical. Start at one end and get into a pattern. This may seem boring but the reason will become clear when you come to the second coat and you don’t know where you have been and where you haven’t! Roller paint takes a while to dry to its final colour.
It will look patchy at first but give it an hour or so and it will clear. Patience. Leyland SDM do a very good quality, and not too dear, Brilliant White Vinyl Matt. If you go back to them often, they’ll give you a good discount even if you don’t have an account – just be friendly!
Use a finger to extract those little bits of dry paint or roller-weave from the surface being painted before it dries. You can have a quick clean up roll to remove finger marks and the end result is leagues ahead. You can keep a roller (or brush) wet for a while (during lunch-break) by wrapping with a plastic shopping bag; this is only good for a few hours – don’t get lazy and store it like that overnight! Always clean your roller and brushes thoroughly at the end of the day or when finished. You will save so much money in the long-run by looking after painting equipment (and tools for that matter). It takes a while to clean a roller properly, patience. Hold brushes, bristles-up, beneath the tap to clean the fat bits.
Snagging
Screw holes
Remove any screws carefully. Unscrew slowly, taking into account any curvature in the screws – often people will hammer screws up or down to achieve a level – this bends the screws and makes them harder to get out. First sand down the area where the screw has been until flush with the rest of the wall. Never be tempted to miss out this step – you will see the need for it later. Get a filling plaster – white quick-drying Polyfilla is usually the easiest. Mix it up properly – should be a bit like toothpaste – not runny, not hard, no lumps (or as few as possible). If under-prepared and missing the correct metal tool (filling/palette knife), a credit card/unused rewards card works for filling the holes.
Some people insist it is easiest to do it with your fingers. Whatever works for you.
Always fill a little proud (bulging out from the wall a bit). As the plaster dries, it shrinks. You want it to shrink back just enough to fill the hole. For deeper holes it is worth filling twice. The first will fill most of the hole, the second will go a little proud. It doesn’t matter if it looks a bit fatter than the wall, but it is always worth smoothing out the edges of the plaster – you will find a lot of (later) sanding time is taken up smoothing the edges. Eyes will notice a line far easier than they will a bulge. Let the filler dry COMPLETELY: trying to sand it before it is properly dry will cause a mess.
If you have made a travesty, use coarse sandpaper first, but as you get better you will really just need a very fine sandpaper (or a worn-out coarse one) for this job. What you are trying to eradicate is any difference in light as it hits the wall; a fine sandpaper makes fewer grooves to catch the light – hence better.
Re-painting
Always snag with the same paint as has been used for the wall! This is vital! And when I say the same paint, I mean the same brand, the same super-matt/matt, the same white/brilliant white. When snagging a wall don’t brush the paint on in a traditional way – use the bristles end of a dry(ish) brush, perpendicular to the wall, with just a little paint. Dab at the wall until all the paint is dotted evenly over the surface – this copies the marks that a roller leaves. An old and rather damaged brush works best for this.
Once you have done the snagging – once or twice depending on the whiteness of your filler – you will still notice the wall has an uneven appearance, especially when viewed from the side. This is caused by different paint timings and sanding dust on the wall.
- If you are on a very tight budget: wipe the wall with a clean, very slightly damp cloth – over the whole wall – using circular motions – think Karate Kid.
- If on a slightly bigger budget: water down white paint – you can get away with 1 part paint to 2 parts water – and roller the wall.
- If money and technicians are no object: go at it and roller another full layer of paint onto the wall. If you have marks coming through the paint from previous use, or if the wall has been painted another colour: an oil-based coat before your emulsion helps with marks; a basecoat before emulsion gets things white quicker. To dry a wall in the last few minutes before the opening – we have all been there – use a hair dryer.