From "EEEK!" to Chic - Painting

So it's Friday morning, and I'm planning on spending the whole weekend working on the apartment.  I already spent all of last weekend on the apartment and some of this week doing mostly painting.  I've painted before, but I don't remember it taking this long.

It's taking forever.

I've been paying painstaking attention to detail thus far.  I want to make sure I do it right and that it looks super nice, so I've been taping walls, washing baseboards, painting even coats.  I've been playing around to see what works, and here's what I learned.

Tip #1 -Taping is not always necessary
I'm painting walls and trim that already have several coats of paint already on them.  The borders between the trim and the walls is sort of blurred and filled in with old paint.  I spent a couple hours meticulously taping the trim, only to find out that the paint bled underneath and I have to go back and touch-up all the perimeters anyway.  I read on some DIY site that you could apply painters' caulk over the tape, before painting, and that it will help you keep those clean lines.  But really, who has time for that?  Not me.  Instead I painted the walls with a roller right up to the edges.  I went back with a small brush and cut into the edges slowly to make sure I had perfect lines.  Cutting in takes quite a while, to make sure it's done perfectly, but it also totally replaces the time you'd spend taping the room.

Tip #2 - Cut in edges with your darker color over your lighter color
I read somewhere that you should paint your trimn first, and then your walls.  This didn't seem right to me, so I painted my walls first.  When I went back and painted the trim, I found it was sort of difficult to cut in the white trim next to the "Bleached Denim" walls -- I was making a mess.  So the next room I did, I painted all the trim first and then painted the walls.  I found it was SO MUCH easier to cut in with the darker color up against the white trim - it made for much cleaner lines.

Tip #3 - Definitely wash your trim
I'm actually not sure how necessary this step really is, but I found my baseboards to be caked with dust.  Same with the window sills.  I don't know if more dust settles in those places more than anywhere else, or if they just aren't washed as often.  But I'm doing a high gloss on all my trim and I want it to look really nice, so I took a rag and washed those suckers down and let them dry before painting them.

So, some more pictures.  I haven't quite settled on what each room will be - except for the bedroom - so I've taken to numbering the rooms instead.  Starting with the room you walk into, that's Room 1.  You work your way to the left until you get to Room 4, which will be the bedroom.  To the right of Room 1 is the kitchen and bathroom...you still with me?  Below are some pics of Room 4:

And here are some pics of Room 1:

You see now, I've definitely got to repaint those floors.  They're a mess.  That's a high priority for the weekend - I'm going to keep them the same dark espresso brown color.  The walls, I decided, were going to be blue and gray.  It took a long time to figure out the color scheme, but I decided on "Bleached Denim" and "Manhattan Mist" from Behr.  I didn't want all the walls to be white, but I also didn't want a kaleidescope effect.  But I had a vision of looking down the hallway and seeing the last room in a bold color.  So I decided to paint Rooms 1 & 4 the blue, and Rooms 2 & 3 the gray.  You can see at the top of this post how it started out after I painted the blue rooms first.  And below you can see the effect with the gray rooms painted:

You can also see how messy I got with the trim paint after I had already painted the walls.  On top of the light on dark thing, it was hard to get paint into all those grooves.  I definitely, highly recommend painting trim first, especially if you are doing it in a lighter color than the walls.  You can see below in Room 3 how much better it came out when I ditched the tape, and cut in with the wall color instead:

I still have a some touch ups to make, but I feel pretty satisfied with this one room.  One down, three to go...and then the kitchen and bathroom.  Oy.  I also decided last night that I have to paint the ceilings...I was trying to avoid it, but it is unavoidable.  I really had wanted to tackle painting the floors tonight, but that will have to wait until tomorrow night instead.

Ready for a busy, busy weekend!!  Stay tuned!!