Color your World ...

Painting your walls is a great way to brighten your room and your outlook on life!

It is easy to be intimidated by the idea of painting a room in your house yourself. The idea that you have no idea where to even start is often the reason many of us never tackle this kind of project. There are two outcomes that come from having a phobia about doing your own interior painting. The second worst outcome is you pay someone to do it. There is nothing wrong with this and you do create work for a local contractor. But finding a contractor that won't overcharge you can be a major headache. And the horror stories people tell about hiring a contractor to redo their kitchen or repaint some rooms in the house can chase you off from that idea.

The worst outcome of avoiding doing this work is just not doing it. So your home becomes more and more run down which is embarrassing to you when you entertain. So you have to either face your fears about painting the room yourself or face your fears about getting a contractor. Either way can be scary. And all this because you couldn't answer the question, "Where do I start?"

You start with the room itself. That might surprise you because we don't have you start by running to the paint or hardware store and buying five gallons of interior paint to get the process going. We don’t want you to do that because until you evaluate the extent of the paint job you need to do and what you want the room to look like when you get done, its foolish to buy the paint too early. In fact, quite a few steps happen before you ever spend a dime.

If you are just trying to restore the room to what it looked like when it looked good, then you will not need as much paint. You are just trying to make the damaged areas of the paint job that is there go away and you are not going to change the color at all. In this case if you buy paint at all, you will need to have the paint match the color of the paint that is on the wall completely. That means you must take a sample of the existing paint to the paint store so they can match it.

But you might have some paint under the staircase that is left over from when the walls were painted at first. In general, you probably should not try to use that. For one thing, if that paint has been in that can for ten years, it may not be in very good shape. Moreover, that paint is the color that your walls were originally. Over time, your walls have changed colors as they have been exposed to light, pollutants and other thigns that affect color.

The first thing you will do is evaluate how much paint you will need. You can do this by either making an estimate of how many areas you are going to touch up or by computing the full wall size if you are going to paint it all and taking that to the paint store. Then find a way to take in a small sample of the current paint. You can go ahead and knock a hunk out since you are going to repair it anyway. The paint professionals can match that color. The out come is new paint that is tinted just right so the outcome is a perfect match that repairs the walls and gives you a room that is good as new. And you can feel good because you did it yourself.

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Wishing you Great Success!

Karen