Painting a room seems like an easy way to update or decorate your home. It can also be very expensive, frustrating and a lot of work. I am lazy and cheap and have figured out a few tricks to reduce both cost and headaches.
Here are my favorite cost cutting supplies:
1. Satin or semi-gloss paint. This is a little more pricey than flat, but flat paint will make you crazy! It is almost impossible to keep clean, and it feels like a chalkboard. You will want to re-paint after a couple of months if you go with flat, so save yourself time and money and stick with a more glossy sheen
2. Buy the paint color samples. You can get these at any paint store. As the “paint lady” for years, I always would tell my customers that the color you pick on a swatch is going to look much different on your walls. If only they offered these small $4 samples back then, it would have saved a lot of people a lot of money and time on paint. So many customers would buy five gallons of paint, only to come back two days later to get a different color because it looked like peanut butter.
3. Middle price range roller. You don’t need to fork out the cash and get those top-of-the-line rollers. They are for professionals who use them every day.
4. Foam brushes. Yup, that’s right. Cheap foam brushes work great for getting in corners and around trim. And they are cheap! Again, those pricey paint brushes are for the everyday user. What’s also nice about the foam ones, is you can just throw them away when you’re done, so no messy brush to clean out.
5. Painter’s tape. The blue kind is amazing! This is a splurge that is worth it. Nobody has a steady enough hand to paint perfect lines around trim and baseboards.
6. Disposable drop cloth. These are just rolls of plastic, some pre-taped, that will cover your valuable carpet, flooring and furniture. It is definitely worth the little extra expense. There was one time I had forgotten the drop cloth and tried to use trash bags. Disaster! Once again, with the disposable kind, you can just roll it up and toss it, taking the wet paint mess with it.
A few more tricks if you are on a tiny budget:
Improperly tinted paint supply. Every paint store has a pile of this paint. This is usually an employee error. If they have a five gallon of this paint, you can have them “color correct” it for you. Basically, you pick a color similar or darker to the paint already mixed, and they can add more colorant to it to match the color you want. They usually sell this for $5 a gallon, so you can save a lot of cash this way. Some stores might charge a small fee to do it, but it will still be much cheaper.
Roll on paint in a W pattern. This helps cover the wall without leaving those odd looking paint lines. I can get the job done in 1-2 coats if I W the paint on.
Use primer. Only use this if your existing wall color is dark, has a lot of patched up holes or is really old. Primer is cheap, and if you put a coat on first, you will need less paint.
Use a thin piece of cardboard to protect the ceiling. They have those fancy plastic things you can buy, but if you can find a thin piece of cardboard, you can do the same job. Or you can use your painters tape to protect the ceiling; it’s just more prep-work.
That’s about it. Happy painting!
