The scare floor will be… painted?

Sorry, I just could not resist using one of my all time favorite kid movie quotes. Any guesses where it’s from? Monsters, Inc. Such a great movie. Here’s the actual quote plus a bunch more that are equally as awesome.

Before we moved into the new house we wanted to replace all the carpet. If we were going to rip up all the carpet it seemed like as good a time as any to paint all the baseboards and trim in each room with a fresh coat of white paint. The baseboards were dingy and dirty. Also, it looked as if the original trim color was an almond color but the previous owners had made an attempt to paint it white. Upon further inspection we realized the new white paint was actually primer, so they all had that flat chalky texture.

All the open living areas are either tile or hardwood, but all 4 bedrooms and gameroom were carpet. Those are the rooms that I prepped and painted before the carpet installers were to arrive 3 days later (5 rooms total). The open area baseboards and trim (living, piano, kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry) are still the previous color and I will paint them as I paint each room.

Here’s one of the doors and baseboards before I started painting:

As I prepped the rooms for the new trim paint job I realized just how dirty everything really was. This brought on one of the several panic attacks I’ve had about moving into this house. I am more of a neurotic clean-freak than I previously realized. I just canNOT deal with sticky stuff or filth.

The first order of business was to peel back all the carpet and padding in each of the 5 rooms I was attempting to paint (in 3 days flat). The carpet folks told me to just peel the edges of the carpet back and fold it towards the center of the room. They would take care of the disposal once they got there a few days later.

The plan was to peel back all the carpet and use a paint sprayer to add a fresh coat of primer to all the trim and baseboards (but not the window sills. I will paint them when I add moulding around each window). The following day I would go back and use the paint sprayer to paint a fresh coat of Sherwin Williams Semi-Gloss paint in my favorite trim color – Alabaster (all the trim in every house I’ve ever painted is Alabaster).

I started by purchasing my paint. I bought 4 gallons of Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 primer. I did not want to end up with another door disaster, so after some research I chose the 1-2-3 because it is water-based (aka easier to clean up) but says it will cover everything including oil based paints. For 5 rooms I used every drop of the 4 gallons of primer.

For the trim paint I went back to my tried and trusted Sherwin Williams (this is not a sponsored post. I am not affiliated with Sherwin Williams. I just prefer their paint over any other). I went with the ProClassic in a semi-gloss because I’ve used this before, I like it, and they recommend it. Tip: if you sign up for their free rewards program you will always get a discount on your paint when you purchase it. I bought 3 gallons of this paint and only used a gallon and a half. If you prime well your {more expensive} top coat paint will go further and wont need as many coats for good coverage.

Now for the paint gun. I ended up purchasing the Graco True Coat Plus from Lowe’s. It was a pricier option coming in at $259 plus tax, but I feel like it was worth the investment. I first read about this particular brand and model at Bower Power who has had a lot of positive things to say about it. I wanted to make sure I was making a good purchase so I also chose a few more other brand paint sprayers I was interested in, then went over to Amazon and read the reviews to each spray gun. The Graco got the best reviews so it is the one that I purchased. (I am also not affiliated with Graco).

The paint sprayer made my job of painting all the baseboards, trim, and doors in 5 rooms a breeze. It would have taken me days and days to paint all this by hand. Painting is messy business though so after 2 days of painting my brand-new shiny pretty paint sprayer now looks well loved.

Because we hadn’t moved in yet I had minimal prep work which was nice. I didn’t tape any of the baseboards or trim. The only taping (with painters tape) I did was around each doorknob and the french doors in the gameroom.

As you can see, I didn’t even tape off the walls. I am planning on repainting every single room in this house, so I just opted to have the overspray from the paint sprayer go directly onto the walls. I still haven’t painted any walls yet, so our rooms currently look terrible!

I removed the bifold closet doors and leaned them up against the wall. They too got fresh coats of paint, but in retrospect I would have skipped this step because I decided in the end to leave the doors off and store them in the attic.

Here are the finished baseboards (after all the carpet had been completely removed from the room).

And a finished “after” of the really dirty door I showed you at the beginning of the post. Even though the walls look terrible now, just having the trim painted already brightened up the place and made me feel 10x better about moving in.

Here’s a before and after of the painted door. This door started out primer white, but the previous owners never painted the other side of the door so it’s still the almond color.

Here’s a better view of the almond color vs. the new Alabaster:

If you look closely in the above picture you can see in the hallway that the baseboard is primer white and the door in the hall is still almond. I’ve got lots of trim painting in my future to get this house completely uniform and matching. But, wow, fresh shiny white doors really give me warm fuzzies. I may have spent the next week just admiring the baseboards and doors. Now that the carpet is in, aside from the two-toned ugly walls I kinda feel like I live in a brand new house.

Next up… a small tile job and then all about carpet.