The day or night before painting, you'll want to prepare your room. Move any furniture away from the walls and cover it if necessary. Remove works of art and other decorative items from the walls. Finally, remove the cover plates from electrical outlets and switches.
Keep them in a place with their screws so you don't lose them. Juggling family, work and life may leave little time for tasks you'd like to do at home, such as painting, but there's always a way. As long as you understand the basics, you can paint a room bit by bit. It's all about preparation, knowing where to leave it and storing it properly between sessions.
So add a brush to your juggling act and have an hour off more or less here and there. For example, using a dark tone on walls and painting the ceiling and moldings will take longer than simply painting the walls in a neutral color. Just like preparation, cleaning and retouching are important, and should be taken into account in the total time to paint a room. Basically, this just means cleaning them to get rid of dust, lint, or other debris, since you don't want all that dirt to get trapped under a layer of paint.
Remove the covers of the light switches and outlets and apply painter's tape to protect the outlets and switches from drops of paint. While painting, be sure to look back and see if there are drops or areas where the paint is thicker than in other areas. If you need a break, you can use plastic wrap to cover the paint, simply press lightly on the paint to prevent skin from forming. Of course, preparing and painting a room will take more or less time depending on how much you need to cover.
When applying paint with the roller, make long, W-shaped strokes to achieve wide coverage (and avoid annoying roller marks). Replace the lid of the paint can securely and without hammered dents by placing a short two-by-four board or a flat rod to mix wood paint over the seam and hitting the wood, instead of the can, with a hammer to seal it hermetically. If you neglect this step, you'll have a mess, at best, or an ugly and defective paint job, at worst. However, thankfully, there are plenty of creative ways to reduce time and paint a room quickly.
I like to take a slightly damp paper towel and simply wipe the top of the sockets and around any other molding I'm going to paint on. This is by far my least favorite part of the painting process because it takes a little longer.
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