Wednesday 22nd November, 7.30am
G'Day Dave here. The good people at Selleys have asked me to write a "blog" over Summer, to give some insight into Home Improvement inside and around the home.
Now, if your place is anything like my place, we are getting ready for Christmas and this means preparing for the arrival of my in-laws. Trish, my wife, has asked me to re-paint the spare bedroom to "freshen it up" for when her parents arrive. So since day-light saving is here I thought I should get in tonight and start doing the preparation work, so I can get onto painting the room this weekend.
It is really important to ensure you do all the right preparation work before you paint, because this is the way you'll get a professional finish which will last, and there is nothing worse than a bad paint job. Tonight I firstly got in and washed all the walls, skirting boards and architraves down with Selleys Liquid Sugar Soap. Sugar Soap is great at cleaning the wall right back to the painted surface and is easy to use, because you can just add it to water and wipe it on with a sponge. Like anything it is important to ensure the surface is clean before you start painting it, otherwise you are painting over dirt.
Tomorrow night I am going to get in and fill all the gaps and cracks in the room. Unfortunately for me, we live in an older place, so there has been quite a bit of movement over the years, which has meant there is a lot of cracking between the skirting board, cornice, window frames and the walls. So I am going to fill these gaps with Selleys No More Gaps Multipurpose, because it has the best flexibility out of all the flexible gap fillers on the markets, so it will be able to cope with the house movement. I don't know about you but the one thing I don't want to do is do all this work and paint this room, and then see all these cracks appearing. It also tools off nice and smooth, so when it is painted over the rooms looks really well done. So tonight I have put good quality masking tape down along both sides of the gaps between the cornice, skirting boards and windows, so when I fill the gaps tomorrow night with Selleys No More Gaps and then tool it off with a filling blade, the excess will go over the tape making it easier to clean up.
Tomorrow night I will also be patching a hole my boy Scotty put into the wall when he pushed the door back too far into the wall. Selleys have created this great product called Selleys Spakfilla Coloursmart, which goes on pink and dries white, when it is ready to be painted over. So all I will need to do is press some of the Spakfilla into the hole with the spatula which is provided on top of the tub and then scrape off the excess, and then I will let it tell me when it's ready to be sanded back and painted over.
The last thing I will do before I paint on the weekend is put down some good quality drop cloths. Now my tip to anyone painting is to ensure you get yourself some canvas drop cloths, because they are heavier than plastic drop cloths, they don't scrunch up underneath your feet when you are trying to paint so you don't need to keep adjusting them back into place. I bought myself a 12 x 12ft Rota Cota Painter's Drop Cloth awhile back now and because it is made of good quality canvas and is stitched around the edge I have found it just lasts and lasts and lasts.
Anyway I'll let you know how I go after I have painted the room this weekend.
- Dave
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