5 Mistakes To Avoid When Painting Your Ceiling in Arlington, VA
When you are in the process of renovating your home, one thing that people tend to do is to think about how they can make what they already have looked better — and one option is to paint your walls.
Painting your walls is important, but one wall that is too often ignored is the ceiling — and even when people do take the time to do so, they will make some fairly simple mistakes that can really throw the project into complication after complication and make it a lot more time consuming and expensive than it need be.
With that being the case, here are five mistakes to avoid when painting your ceiling in Arlington, VA.
1. Not Sanding First
Though it is fairly well known that you should sand surfaces that you are planning on painting and even sanding in between the first and second coats of paint if you find it to work well — and many do find it works — it is less well known that this extends to ceilings as well.
The ceiling is just as much a surface as any wall that you would paint, and so it makes sense that you would want to take the time to sand the surface of your ceiling prior to painting it as you are going to want a smooth surface to paint.
2. Using An Overly Long Telescoping Handle
A telescoping handle is good for when you don’t have a ladder and need to be able to get your paint roller to the ceiling.
What you need to bear in mind is that you should have a telescoping handle that is meant for the height of the ceiling that you actually have and not just any length regardless of how tall the ceiling is.
If you get a telescoping handle that is overly long, you won’t extend the handle nearly enough, and then what will happen is that you will have what is left of the telescoping part in the base, making it both difficult to handle as well as very heavy.
3. Going Too High On The Ladder
If you aren’t using a telescoping handle for your paint roller and instead are using a ladder, you need to be careful not to go too high on the ladder.
By this, we are referring, of course, to the steps that are the absolute top one as well as, in some cases, the next to top one.
There will be some that suggest that you can use the top of the ladder as a place to rest supplies, but your experience will be able to tell you if that is a good idea or not.
4. Using The Wrong Kind Of Paint
There are many kinds of paint out there, but not all of them can serve the same purpose.
Paint that is meant for outdoor use should not be used for indoor painting, for example.
Similarly, if you really want to get a good ceiling painting job done, you should aim to use paint that is meant for painting your ceiling — it tends to be a bit flatter than not and has the added benefit of being a lot less likely to drip as much as your typical indoor paint.
This is good because when you’re working with a ceiling, less dripping is better.
5. Not Protecting Your Floors
When you paint your ceiling, there is going to be dripping paint — it’s not just something that is a possibility it will definitely happen.
The question is how you are going to handle it and, more importantly, how you will protect the floor and anything else that may be in the way.
If you use a heavy drop cloth that has a plastic lining, you will not only protect the floor via the plastic part, but you’ll ensure that it doesn’t move as it won’t be moving due to it being heavier.
You can use a lighter drop cloth or plastic tarp to protect furniture that may be too difficult to remove from the room.
Image Painting is a professional full-service residential & commercial painting contractor based in Falls Church, Virginia. We have served the Washington DC metropolitan area since 2003. You can click below to request an estimate.