As we said on the homepage, getting a great finish when you’re decorating is heavily reliant on doing a thorough job in the preparation stages.
First and foremost, clear a room as much as you possibly can before doing anything else. If you’ve got a tiny bedsit, that’s not going to be easy, or even possible. On the other hand, if you’re a proud homeowner (or at least will be proud once the decorating is sorted), moving a few bits of furniture into another room for a few days might be inconvenient, but it’s going to make the job a lot easier. Climbing over a sofa or trying to fit in a gap behind a unit really isn’t ideal when you’re trying to paint or hang wallpaper. What’s more, excess furniture can cast shadows which makes getting a great finish even harder. Spend the time now to clear your work area, you’ll save yourself a lot of hassle.
So, rant over, let’s take a look at the types of kit you might need in order to be as prepared as you can be once you’re ready to pick up those paint brushes or hang that paper.
Wallpaper Steamers
Wallpaper steamers, strippers, steam machines, doofers, Nigel, we’ve heard these magical machines called all sorts of things over the years, and quite frankly, you can call them what you like, they’re brilliant. If you’ve got old paper to remove, you might well be very lucky and find it just neatly peels off the wall in one piece. We’ve never seen that happen once though. Granted, some rooms are far, far easier than others, but having a steamer handy makes any tough bits a breeze.
Check out our top picks, and make that wallpaper much easier to remove.
Heat Guns
Heat guns, paint stripper, paint melters, doofers, Nig… oh wait, we’ve done that one already. Same principle though, they go by a range of names, yet come in really handy when you need one. Blistered or cracked paint are the main jobs these are great for, but you’ll also find times when someone’s painted over some really nice period features of just some wood that would look better less painted and more, well, woody.
Here’s some great choices for paint heat guns.
Filler
Maybe you’re lucky and you’re in a brand new house, which expanses of beautiful flat walls. If so, get out of this section, it’s not for you, head over to the ideas or decorating sections instead. For the rest of us, the other 99% of civilisation, there’s more than a slight chance of needing some filler in the coming days as the decorating project gets underway. There are tons of brands of filler, and making bold claims about what they can do and how quickly they dry, how much you need to sand them and so on. Let me tell you right now, not all fillers are equal. I obviously didn’t need to tell you that because it should be obvious, but we all get drawn to the cheapest of the cheap ever now and then don’t we? It’ll be fine…..won’t it?
Get our thoughts on what to grab and what to avoid here.