When my wife and I first bought our house in 1998, the interior was almost entirely pink. Not just pink, but PINK, the two bit whorehouse pepto-bismol type of pink. So before moving in I painted all of the walls off white. Due to my lack of funds, I used the cheapest paint I could find. As a result, there is a lot of orange peel texture on the walls. (Lots of drips and runs too) I am now planning to repaint with a quality paint. Before I can do that though, I need to prep well. I plan on sanding all of the drips and runs out and doing some general patching and filling of gouges, etc. (Three children are hard on the drywall . . .) The question is this: Do I need to sand the walls entirely to get rid of the orange peel texture? Or will the higher quality paint cover the texture since the new paint will be thicker. For the most part, the orange peel isn’t bad, but it is noticeable. My plan is to sand with 150 grit paper on a handheld drywall sanding pad (the kind that takes 1/3 sheet of paper or sanding screen) Is this a good approach or is there a better way to prep these walls?
The area concerned is the LR, DR, and hall, so I would prefer to avoid sanding EVERYTHING, but will if I have to. I would much rather spot prep if that will take care of things and give me a smooth finish coat. The new paint will be a satin finish and will be going over the existing flat paint; if that matters.
Any other tips or thoughts are welcome too. I don’t want to have to do this again in another 5 years if I can help it.
Replies
I dont know how much orange peel you are talking about , but if the dw contractor did it on the total house , you are in for a big mess and a lot more work. Intensive . So lets have more info. A little over spray isnt any thing. She will shoot you if you sand that much in her house , as it will be EVERYWHERE.
Tim Mooney
Tim- it wasn't the DW contractor. The DW is good. It's the cheap paint I applied. The orange peel is from the 3/8" roller I used to paint the walls. You know, overwork the paint cuz it's garbage and you get a "texture" when it dries. Not really bad, but if I look closely I can notice it.
A hand once told me , "maybe you are looking to close ".
I laughed but its true most of the time . The paint applied with a 1 inch nap sheep skin roller nap should fix you up. A primer wont be needed if you dont sand. You might need to clean the wall with tsp solution. You are probably good to go and watch some football this weekend.
Happy Thanksgiving
Tim Mooney
Thanks Tim. Does my plan for sanding the drips and runs sound feasible or is there some better way I'm not aware of?
Sanding or scaping with a 3 inch sharp knife
Tim Mooney
Tim is right, just scrape and sand out the drips and runs, patch if you have to. If you look closely you'll see the difference in texture where you sand so the trick is not to look too close, it's bad for you anyway.
To do a good job you'll need two coats. You can tint the primer to the approximate color of the top coat and that'll save you some time for the game.
My helper Adil and me had a day with nothing to do being that my customer where I'm working on a small one week job asked if we could take the day before Thanksgiving off from there. Didnt wanna get back into the extensive additions I'm doing on my 1680 house just for one day soooooo......
My 13 year old daughter Jolie is getting older and actually took all the billions of pictures she "scotch taped" to the walls off.....nightmare!
Staples, magic marker writings...CRAYON.... bad paintjobs of over god knows how many past years with drips, bumps....blah blah blah....
I got out two electric sanders....the orbital and vibrator and we spent about three hours sanding.....I probably could have sanded another cpl of hours but enough was enough.
Spackled the holes...lightly sanded the spackling (lightweight/quick dry) washed the walls and gave it a first coat of pale green Benny Moore Historic Color MAtte washable paint......dude......do it right...its yer house.....the room so far looks so incredably different.....gorgous.
As I told Adil (my apprentice)......"pay attention and do the proper preperation work" its almost the whole job right there! He didn't get it till after we cut in and rolled out the first coat...Blew his mind how different it looked.
Be well bro and do it right the first time (you'll be glad you did)
andy
PS.....The only thing worse than the preparation.......is thinking about it!!!
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Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I guess my plan at this point is to prep the drips/runs/really bad spots. Since it's three rooms, I'll do it a room at a time so as not to drive myself crazy. Then I think I'll paint a wall somewhere and take a look at the results to see if they satisfy me.
I took a second look at the crappy texture yesterday and it really isn't THAT bad. SO I hope the new paint will cover it nicely.
Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. Mine was great. One of the two days a year (the other is Christmas) where ANYTHING other than having fun with my kids is off limits. Thanks again.