Preparation is Key: Steps to Take Before Starting Your House Painting Project

Painting a house is no easy undertaking. Some people devote their entire lives to painting. If it’s something you are interested in doing, preparation is key. Arriving with a bucket of paint and some brushes is going to cause a lot of trouble. You need to spend time getting everything ready so that you don’t damage furniture, or carpets, or inconvenience your loved ones. This post will explore this topic in more detail, telling you about some steps that you need to take before you start a house painting project.

Hire Professional Support

You don’t necessarily need to paint your house yourself. In fact, you can hire somebody to do it for you. If you are planning on hiring an interior painter, you need to perform some checks to make sure that they are worth hiring. You need to ensure you get the right person for the job. A painter with experience, good reviews, and an extensive gallery of past work is who you should be looking for. Of course, if you have never had to hire a painter before, the chances are that you aren’t going to have any idea how to proceed.

1. Read Reviews

A company’s reviews will help you to decide whether doing business with them is a good idea or not. When you are looking for a company to work with, reviews can give you an insight into what kind of service they offer. A lot of people completely overlook reviews when they are searching for businesses to hire. Overlooking reviews means you lose out on finding out what a business’s faults are before working with them. If you skip reviews, you could have to learn the hard way why a business should be avoided. When you are reading reviews, you need to prioritize ones posted on independent sites like Google Review and Trustpilot. Try to avoid vetted reviews posted on the businesses’ websites. Reviews that have been approved on the business’s website are likely to be biased and overly positive.

2. Previous Work

Before you hire a company to paint your house for you, take some time to look at work they have completed in the past. You can do this by looking at the ‘Gallery’ section on their website. Their site gallery will display images of jobs they have finished for past clients. This is one of the best ways to find out what a company's work is really like. If it looks sloppy or poorly finished, then obviously you need to find another one to work with. If the business you are interested in working with does not have a gallery on their website, consider reaching out to them via e-mail and asking for images of jobs they have completed in the past. Another way for you to see what the company's previous work is like is to go onto one of their social media accounts and take a look at the comments on their posts. Sooner or later, you should come across somebody thanking them for work they have done at their home. You can then get in touch with this person and ask them what the company was like to work with.

3. Experience Level

You should not hire a company to paint your house until you're confident that they are experienced. You can find out how experienced the company is by following the two previous steps. Another way of determining a company’s level of experience is to actually talk to them. Reach out to them via e-mail or over the phone and make an inquiry about a job. They should get back to you quickly and let you know why you should hire them. Meet with them and get a quote, then ask any questions you have for them then and there. In terms of preparation, make sure that you prepare a set of questions to ask them so that you can ascertain their experience level. A poorly finished paint job can make your house look sloppy and untidy. You need a professional to help you.

4. Offer Warranty

Try to find a company that offers warranties. A warranty is a form of financial protection that ensures if the work you pay for is not completed to a satisfactory degree, you get compensated. If the painting company you hire does not paint your house properly or does it sloppily, you can use your warranty to get them to return and do the work all over again. Alternatively, you can demand a refund. When you are paying for contractors to perform work on your home, always pay using a credit card. That way, you can get your money back more easily if they mess you around. It is not unusual for contracting firms to offer warranties or money-back guarantees. Make sure that you obtain as much evidence as you can if you plan on making a chargeback or demanding a refund.

5. Get Recommendations

If you want your house painted but have never had to hire a painter or any contractor before, try and get recommendations from your loved ones. Family members should be able to give you the contact information of painting firms. This is especially true if you have a large family. Make sure that you research any recommendations that are made to you and verify that the companies being recommended are indeed worth hiring. You can do this by reading a company’s reviews and taking the other steps mentioned above. If the person recommending a painting company to you is not a close family member or friend, they could be endorsing a loved one’s business, and as a consequence, their recommendation will be biased.

Preparing for a Paint Job

1. Moving Furniture Around

The first thing that you should do if you're preparing for your house to get painted is to move your furniture around. You do not want to leave your furniture where it is. This is especially true if the furniture you have at home is expensive. Keeping furniture in the same places could lead to it getting paint on it. Removing paint that has settled on furniture can be very difficult. Trying to remove paint from furniture that is old or antique could lead to the furniture itself getting damaged. If you are not able to move your furniture around or it must stay in the same place because there is nowhere to put it, at least cover it in plastic. You can order plastic sheets online that you can use to protect furniture.

2. Remove Window Dressings

Start painting, you need to take down any curtains or blinds. Leaving curtains and blinds up could lead to paint getting on them. As mentioned in the previous section, it can be difficult to remove paint that is set from furniture. Make sure that when you are taking curtains and blinds down, you put up some kind of replacement to conceal the inside of your house. Many people put bed sheets up in the interim between the paint job starting and finishing. It is especially important to put some kind of window covering up if you are not going to be staying in your house for the duration of the paint job.

3. Take Wall Hangings Down

In addition to taking down window dressings and furnishings, you also need to remove wall hangings. If you leave wall hangings up and allow professionals to paint over them, you will end up with spots where the walls are different colors. This is because, underneath wall hangings, there will be unpainted areas that are the same color that your walls were before your home was painted. If you hire a professional company to paint your home for you, they will do all of this work on your behalf.

4. Clean Your Walls

Before work can start, you need to clean your walls. If you don't and then dirt is painted over, it will seal it in. This could lead to areas of discoloration or the paint deteriorating faster. Painting services typically clean people's walls for them before starting to paint. If you do not have the time to clean your walls yourself, you may want to hire a company to do the work for you. If you want to paint your home but do not want to clean your walls, you could hire a maid service to come and clean your walls for you. That said, cleaning the walls of your house is a pretty simple thing to do. All you need to do is wipe them down with soap.

5. Move Family Out

Finally, consider moving your family out while work is undertaken. Some people react badly to the fumes released by setting paint. If any of your loved ones are sensitive to paint fumes, move them into a hotel while work is going on. Alternatively, paint your house in stages, i.e., let one room dry before the next is worked on, that way your family can avoid rooms with wet paint. Be sure to keep the windows open when paint is setting so that it dries faster.

Preparing your house for a new paint job is very important. If you don’t, work might not be completed as quickly as it could. If you do not have the time to paint your house yourself, hire a company to do it for you. Use the guidance given here to find a professional painting service.