5 Tips For Painting Your Basement in McLean, VA
When you have a basement, you might think that leaving it how it is basically is not a problem because it’s the basement, and does it really matter if it is painted or not?
The fact is that a well-painted basement looks considerably better than an unpainted basement, or even a basement that has little to no thought put into it.
With that being the case, let us now look at and consider five tips for painting your basement in McLean, VA.
1. The Previous Paint Should Be Cleaned
The first thing you should do when you are painting your basement (unless it has not yet been painted) is to remove the previous paint that had been there.
Though, of course, you could just as well paint over the previous coat of paint, at a certain point, it gets to where you have more paint than the wall, and you should really consider removing the paint.
You can do this with a wire brush or a scraper — this will get the walls clean and free of the previous coat or even coats of paint, depending on how many there actually may be.
2. Remove Debris As Well
Another thing you should do in preparing your basement for painting is to remove the debris that may be found on the surface of the walls.
It’s entirely possible that while you are doing this, you will come across loose mortar as well, and this too needs to be removed — and this is good because you don’t want to try to re-incorporating old mortar with your wall as you are painting it.
This will also be useful because you won’t want the dust from the debris to find its way into your paintwork.
3. Patch With Mortar Or Cement
Another important thing you’re going to need to do when painting your basement is to patch the wall where you see things like cracks and even entire holes.
This is important, of course, because you don’t want to try to paint over areas where the wall is cracked or full of small or medium-sized holes.
It is worth mentioning that once you have patched the holes or cracks in your wall, you should allow time for the patching to dry, and then you are going to need to sand the entire area so that you have an overall smooth surface over which you will be applying your paint.
4. Make Sure To Apply Primer
Since you want to be sure that you have a smooth surface upon which you are painting, one of the key things you can do is apply a coat of primer to your wall.
Primer is an important thing to apply to your basement walls as it first is a better surface in terms of adhesion – paint will adhere much better to primer than it does to a bare wall.
Secondly, when you apply paint to the primer, you are looking at paintwork that will last longer — it stays on the surface longer, and you have fewer issues with the paint peeling.
5. Ventilate, ventilate, and ventilate
Lastly, it is important that throughout the painting process, you have a ventilation system going on so that you aren’t standing there for hours just breathing in the fumes.
You will do this by opening as many windows as possible and using an exhaust fan to get out the bad air from your basement area.
By doing this, you will have a much more successful painting project in getting your basement painted.