Painting 101: Preparing the Walls~

The Hubby is a painter extraordinaire.  So since we are in the process of painting the walls around here, I thought it might be nice to have him share a few of his best tips.  Take it away, Johnny...

Hi, John here.  Today I wanted to show you a little bit about prepping the walls for paint by filling all those annoying holes.

I'm going to use the example of a drywall screw that has "popped" out, but the process is basically the same for any small hole, including nail holes.

Have you ever run across one of these on your wall?

This is a drywall screw that has "popped" out.  It's easy to fix if you follow these steps.

1. Take the corner of a small drywall putty knife and pry the plaster loose from the screw. 

2. Once the screw is exposed, tighten it. 
3. Then you want to use the end of your putty knife to indent the wall around the screw.  If you don't do this, you will have a little mound once you apply the spackle which kind of defeats the purpose of all of this.

4. Take a very small amount of spackle (or joint compound) on the end of your putty knife and scrape it over the hole. 
5. Go over the hole again with your putty knife removing as much spackle as possible. You might need to scrape it a couple of times.  You want to get the wall as clean as possible to avoid having to sand.

Side note:   If you put too much spackle or joint compound on the wall, you'll have to do a lot of sanding, and the sanded area will be smooth and will probably not match the texture of the surrounding wall once it's painted.  Plus, it's a lot of extra work you can avoid.

Just let your filled holes dry, and lightly sand them to remove any spackle that is still on the wall.  Now you're ready to paint.

Filling nail holes is basically the same.  Just skip steps 1 & 2.

THANKS John!!  That man knows his stuff!  Can't wait to show you all our freshly painted walls...hopefully soon. :-)

Off to paint...