Some recently completed painting and decorating work

I have decided to do a post about some of my recently completed work, these are only a selection of work I have done in the past couple of months. They include water damage repair, a wallpapering job and an emusioning job, coincidentally they are all bedrooms.

Water stain to ceiling and walls

The first job shown here was of a water stain to a ceiling and walls. The stain was treated and then the ceiling was painted with white emulsion, with the walls being painted a pink tone emulsion. The woodwork was painted in white satinwood and finally a feature wall was papered to complete the job.

Wallpaper in a bedroom

This job was a simple remove old wallpaper and border, paint the ceiling white and re-paper the walls with a floral patterned wallpaper. No woodwork was done.
I removed the old wallpaper and border, filled some small holes and cracks before painting the ceiling with white emulsion. Finally I hung the floral wallpaper to complete the job.

Painting in a bedroom

The third job I am showing you was a repaint in a bedroom. I started by filling some small holes, there wasn’t much filling to do as the ceiling and walls had been papered. I then painted the ceiling down to the picture rail with white emulsion, then I painted the picture rail before painting the walls in a green colour. The remaining woodwork was painted with white satinwood. The door and floor was not touched, although I had previously varnished them.

How to cut wallpaper

If you are hanging any type of wallpaper, making a good clean cut can make or break a job. The last thing you want to see are torn ragged edges, so the key to cutting wallpaper is to use sharp tools.

Scissors

Scissors can be used to trim paper, cut paper and remove excess paper as you hang, so a good paper hanging pair of scissors are always good to have to hand when wallpapering. To use scissors to trim the top and bottom of the paper, use a pencil to mark a line where you need to cut making sure the paper is well pushed in. Mark and then lift the paper slightly and trim carefully along the line with the scissors or papering shears.

Knife

A knife is the most popular choice, and the best type to use are a craft knife or one that has snap off blades. This way you can simply snap an end off and you have a sharp cutting edge again, this should be done regularly to avoid the knife dragging and tearing the paper. The amount of cuts between each ‘snap’ of blade will depend on the surface you are cutting on to. Wood and plaster will blunt the blade quickly.

To trim the paper make sure the paper is pushed well into where the cut will be, then use something like a wide scraper to hold the paper and then cut along the edge with a sharp knife. Having a sharp knife will make life easier and you can trim on one cut.

Other tools

There are a number of other tools on the market such as rotary cutters, battery powered cutters, triangle shaped and wedge shaped cutter. All these tools work on the same basic principle, they use a sharp cutting blade to trim the paper. Some I have to say are more successful than others, and some last better than others but at the end of the day it is personal preference to which tool you prefer to use.

Wallpaper Calculator

If you need to work out how many rolls of wallpaper to buy, why not use our Wallpaper Calculator to do it, it even has a feet to metre convertor.

New website now live

Follow on from my last post, the new look Property Decorating website has now been live for a week or so. It is a responsive design which means it will work on desktop PC’s, laptops, notebooks, tablets and smartphones, in fact any web enabled device.

The blog now also has the new look and we are tweaking things in the background to improve usability.

If you have any issues using the site or blog, please let us know and we will try to address them.

We hope you continue enjoying the great facilities such as the calculators, and our blog which is packed full of useful painting and decorating tips, videos and mcuh more.

Decorating

If you live in the Southend on Sea area and would like me to decorate for you, please get in touch, Call 0845 0037 508 or use our online estimate form to arrange a free onsite estimate.