Interior Painting

Most of an Interior Repaint Is Not Painting

If you watched us for a week you would see rolling on about one day of it. The rest is filling, waiting for filler to dry, sanding, vacuuming, caulking, masking, priming the places that need it, and cleaning up so the house is usable overnight.

That ratio is not us being slow. Dried paint film is thin enough that it conceals nothing. Every ridge of compound, every unsanded lap from the last repaint, every caulk bead smeared instead of tooled is still there under the new color, and in a room with a window at one end the low light will find all of it.

Walking the Room First

We quote with a work light held flat against the wall rather than from the doorway. Held at a shallow angle, a light throws a shadow off anything standing proud of the surface, and a wall that looked perfectly fine from the middle of the room turns into a map of dents, roller tracks, popped fixings and old filler.

That is also the conversation about money. Some of what the light finds is worth fixing and some is not, and you should be the one deciding which is which. A hallway you walk past a hundred times a day is worth flattening. The inside of a closet is not.

Surface Preparation

Filling is done in coats. Compound shrinks as it dries, so a single heavy pass sinks in the middle and leaves a ring at the edge, which then has to be sanded off and refilled anyway. Thin coats, dried properly, sanded back until the back of your hand cannot find the join.

Nail pops get a new fastener set beside the old one before anything is filled, because the pop is the fixing moving, not the filler failing. Cracks that run diagonally from a door or window corner are movement and get tape or mesh bedded into the compound. Cracks that are surface crazing in old paint film get sanded and sealed instead.

Glossy surfaces get either a full sand or a bonding primer, and often both. Old alkyd trim in particular will reject a waterborne topcoat that has been put on over an unsanded gloss, and the failure shows up as paint that peels away in a sheet months later when something catches it.

Caulk and Trim

Every joint between trim and wall gets looked at. Old caulk that has split is cut out rather than caulked over, and the new bead is tooled and cut back where it is too heavy. Caulk needs time to skin before paint goes over it, which is one of the reasons the trim day and the wall day are not the same day.

Doors and casings are de-nibbed between coats. It takes minutes per door and it is the difference between trim that feels smooth and trim that feels like fine sandpaper.

Sheen, Honestly

Flat hides the most and marks the easiest. Eggshell is the usual compromise for living space walls here. Satin is more washable and shows more of the surface underneath, which matters in an old house with wavy plaster. Semi-gloss and gloss belong on trim and doors where you want the wipe-down and you have prepped well enough to earn the reflection.

If a wall is not flat, a higher sheen will announce it. That is a prep decision disguised as a color decision, and we would rather have the conversation before we buy the paint.

Living In It While We Work

Doorways get zippered plastic. Floors get covered and taped at the edges, not just laid over. Vents in the work area are sealed so the system does not distribute dust through the rest of the house. Sanders run on vacuum extraction.

At the end of each day the work area is vacuumed and the route in and out is cleared. You get your kitchen back every evening.

Timing Around the Coast

Morning damp off the water slows things down, particularly in a house that has been closed up overnight. Compound and caulk both take longer to dry through than they take to feel dry on top, and sanding something that is dry only on the surface tears it and puts you back a coat.

We plan around it rather than fighting it. Filling late in the day, sanding when the house has warmed and aired, trim work in the middle of the day. It means the schedule is built around the material rather than the calendar.

Call (562) 399-6337 and we will come and walk the rooms with a light.