paint | Hicks House

This is sort of an addendum to the post on the trim in the condo Read That Post Here since the stairs we a much bigger undertaking than the nice straight trim over tile and hardwood… It warranted it’s own post.

The first thing to do in order to prep for the job was to make sure it was adequately taped – top and bottom. The top is easy enough, its nice and straight although on an angle. It’s the bottom on the carpet that is the challenge. Here’s the nifty little trick on how to move the carpet out of the way:

Use a paint scraper to push the tape down into the gap between the trim and carpet

You’ll notice I am using masking tape… DO NOT USE MASKING TAPE! Learn from my mistake and pay the extra money for painters tape. There is a reason painters tape is more expensive, because paint doesn’t stick to it! Ingenious I know. As you can probably tell the masking tape was a pain and a half to remove and took a good chunk of the paint with it. I have learned my lesson.

All taped up and ready to paint!

Once its fully taped you just get to painting it making sure to push the brush down into the grove you taped down to paint as close to the carpet as possible. I started on the right side of the stairs, and since I’m right handed it went pretty nice and smooth and I was starting to think maybe this project wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought…

First coat on the right side

At this point I was feeling pretty good about myself and jumped right into the left side. It was every bit the nightmare I anticipated this project to be. Right handed people are just not meant to paint the left side of stairs, it’s like cruel and unusual punishment. I probably should have started at the top and worked my way down, rather than working up then the angle would have been slightly better.

It takes 3 coats to get the right amount of coverage to actually look nice, so this was weekend two weeks in a row. 🙂

I think it was worth it, it makes the walls stand out so much more and looks clean and modern. What do you think:

White stair trim

Now that we’re back from our Wedding and Honeymoon it’s back to reality full time. We spent our first days back before returning to work (and just about every night after that and the following weekend) working on the condo getting it ready to put on the rental market.

It’s still a work in progress, but one of the things on the to-do list is to paint all of the wood trim white. It looked like this:

Ignore non-painted bathroom interior – that’s on the list too

And like this in the upstairs hall:

wood trimmed hallway

It just looked old and dated. Since being able to rent this place out quickly is of the utmost importance, we thought giving the trim a quick coat would brighten it up and help bring it into the 21st century (the trim had clearly not been touched since the 1980s).

Of course there is no such thing as a quick coat of paint on unfinished wood when going for as drastic as white. It requires taping and at three coats of paint plus a touch up coat, plus some spackle especially in the corners and caulk along the top edge. So after a couple weekends and a few nights it’s getting there.

Look at the difference one coat on just the outside makes!

It looks so much brighter already! Here is another shot of the slider door, it will look even better once we remove the tape.

Instant Update

We’re also replacing all the interior doors which were the plain flat panel regular wood doors to white 6-paneled doors. The two projects together should make the place look much more modern.

So here’s what we still have left to do (that I can think of off the top of my head)

– Finish painting the trim throughout the entire condo

– Power wash and paint the deck

– spackle and caulk the trim throughout entire condo

– paint half bathroom

– paint guest bathroom

– patch all holes in walls from hung pictures – touch up with paint

– deep clean the entire condo including shampoo carpets and clean inside of stove

Oh yeah and list it for rent, pack, move out, and hopefully get a tenant by July 1st. Geez I’m exhausted just thinking about it!