What happens when you skip painting prep?

When preparing for a painting project, you have to prep the painting surface if you want it to turn out well.

There are many things to look for and prepare before starting your exciting project. It can be easy to skip some of these steps because you won’t see the immediate effects, but down the road is when you’ll likely see the issues.

So it makes sense to just skip them to just jump right in out of excitement, unfortunately, that’s not the best route to take.

In this article, we’re going to go over the three things you must do to prep your home, then discuss what happens if you skip these steps.

1. Cleaning

This step is vital for the paint to adhere properly, without it you’ll see the negative effects in 1-2 years.

It’s actually a pretty simple and quick job to do. All it takes is quick scrub down with either a sponge or rag.

But

There are occasions when you will need to add soap or when you can actually skip this step.

If there’s heavy gunk, dust or any weird marks on the way it will be smart to scrub it down with soap and water.

If the wall has nothing really on it you probably won’t need to scrub it down, but it would be smart to just do a quick scrub down, regardless.

Skipping this step can result in the paint nit settling right and you could end up seeing wrinkles, bumps, or even peeling in a couple of years.

2. Moving & Covering Non-Painting Items

This step could end up saving a ton of time, money, and protecting things you probably don’t want paint on. The best part is it will take almost no time out of your project.

For this step, you’ll want to get a drop cloth and some painters tape. The dropcloth will provide protection from dripping paint ruining your floor or furniture.

Painters tape is great for getting a straight edge along with protecting things such as cabinets, other walls, or fixtures.

Without covering these things you’ll end up getting paint on them and then you’ll be spending the rest of the day scrubbing the paint off of them.

3. Test The Paint Color

This step can easily be forgotten behind the excitement of finally getting to paint the wall and transform your home.

To do this you can usually get samples from your hardware store and you’ll just brush a square on parts of the wall to see how the colors will work. Be sure to look at it every part of the day because that affects the look.

Testing paint colors will save you time and money. Because instead of [paingint an entire room one color then realizing the next day that it doesn’t look like what you expected, you’ll then need to go back and redo the whole project.

Final Thoughts

It can be easy to skip over these steps due to excitement. But skipping these steps will cost you more in the end.

Be sure to check everything and that you’re doing it right, it will save you time and money in the end!

Finally, enjoy the project! There will probably be stress involved so do your best to minimize that and just take it slow, in the end, it’ll all be worth it!