Home hunting is what we all do regardless if we already own one or if we are trying to find our first one. Those of us who own a home strive for something bigger and better which is a normal thing and those of us that are living under rent try to find a more permanent solution that we can call our own.
Getting a “new” home goes two ways – building one from scratch just the way you want and you can buy one that has already been built, that suits your desires to some extent. Now building one says everything. You have an idea and a plan and the contractors do what you want. When buying an already existing home you can do some alterations to it to make it more comfortable and acceptable and in that process, you have to invest more time and more money, not to mention other things that tend to pop up.
Today we are talking about walls and how to make old-painted walls look good again. Thanks to residential painting services this task can be done easily and fast without many issues for the pricing is more than acceptable. If you want to be a bit of a DIY person then keep reading and try these things, we prepared for you.
Wall maintenance is nothing out of the ordinary, we all do it in some way. Small touch-ups, small bits of colour, patching a hole or repainting it and preparing for wallpapers. There are plenty of things you can do to make a painted wall look new again, depending on what you want to achieve and what you want to do with it.
Let’s start with the most difficult approach and task – preparing a wall for wallpaper. Getting a wallpaper, you like and putting it on a wall does sound easy enough. All you need is some time, a helping hand and a few tools that are easily found anywhere. You can opt for wallpapers that are already prepared and have glue on them or you can go with those you need to glue by yourself. Whatever you opt for you need to do some wall preparation.
Putting wallpaper on a rough wall with a lot of dents, patch holes and other bad-looking things may impact your wallpaper. You will not get that slick look, you will tear the paper on those rough patches or you may even tear it when you try to smooth it on a surface where it isn’t smooth.
If your wall has had a coat of paint on it, or more, if it had frames, clocks, or anything hanging off of it, the best thing you can do is patches all the holes and bumps and sand the entire wall down. It is a time-consuming job and it needs more tools than you probably own in your home, but it is worth it. over the years paint adds to the thickness of the wall and if you don’t prepare walls for the paint every time you will end up with an uneven surface that looks bad. Sanding down a wall will allow you to adjust those uneven spaces and make the wall feel like glass. This will add to its looks and the look of either a new coat of paint or wallpaper.
Older walls that have seen a lot of wear and tear need more than just sand down. Sometimes you will need to resurface your walls to make them smooth and consistent all around. After years of patching and painting your walls will end up rough and if you want to take some years off your interior then this is what you need. Funny enough this procedure will also require you to do some sanding but not so vigorously because of the compound for sim coating. Now there are specialized compounds for this and which one you will get depends on what you have available locally. The dryer and stiffer compounds are good because they will make a good skim coat on your walls, they will dry faster and accept the second coat, if needed, immediately after you go through the entire room once. It is good for taping that you will do before the final paint, it will not chip and break and it will not leave huge gaps in your walls.
Another thing that painted walls suffer from is flaking and bubbling. This usually happens if the paint coat was too thick and didn’t stick well enough to the wall or in the humid parts of your home like garages, bathrooms and pantries. This is a common thing and it affects anyone and you can make this go away easily. All you need to do is locate the flaking and/or bubbling and clean the surface around good. You need to take a joint knife or a scraper and peel all of it down. Push until you hit a healthy patch of colour and only then you are certain that it will not return or flake more. If needed peal greater segments around the spot just to be on the safe side. When you are done you need to prepare that for painting and you can do it by using a filler or using sandpaper and sanding down the edges to the point where you can’t catch it with your nail.
After sanding and depending on the colour of the previous paint you will have to go with a joint compound or you will be able to just paint it over. If you use the compound make sure you apply it lightly and not too thick. It will dry better, and faster and a new coat of wall paint will stick better to it.
As you can see there are several ways to make your walls great again, next to tearing them down and putting up brand-new ones. Some of these techniques, materials and tools are widely available and you can do it by yourself but if you aren’t much of a DIY person you can always hire professionals that will deal with this fast, cleanly and without much hassle.
