Things You'll Need:
- Drop cloths
- Trisodium phosphate
- Painters tape
- Paint
- Paint tray
- Edger
- Roller
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Step 1
Empty the room and lay down drop cloths. The drop cloths should cover the entire floor and any items you leave in the room.
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Step 2
Remove all fixture covers. For a detailed job, also remove the trim and baseboards with a pry bar and shims. This prevents any gaps in paint around your trim work and ensures that your trim and fixtures don't get paint splatter on them.
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Step 3
Fill dents, cracks and holes in the wall with a patching compound, and sand out any bumps and imperfections. Prime all the repairs prior to painting. Clean the walls with trisodium phosphate and a large sponge, and then rinse with water.
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Step 4
Tape off any trim that you don't remove from the room. Use painters tape, which sticks to your surfaces lightly and doesn't remove the finish when you remove the tape.
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Step 5
Pour 1/2 inch of paint into the reservoir of the paint tray. If you use too much paint, you can overload the roller, but if you use too little paint, you won't have enough to load the roller.
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Step 6
Paint all the corners in the room with the edger, including where the walls meet the ceiling, floors, other walls and any trim that you don't remove in Step 2. The edger should have enough paint to cover the pad but not the rollers.
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Step 7
Roll the paint onto the large areas of the walls using a V- or W-shaped pattern. If you're painting the ceiling, start there and then paint the walls. Work from the top down in order to cover and smooth any paint drips. Work sections that are 3-by-3 feet, smoothing out the paint before moving on.
