On the bench now
current stage
On the bench now — Painting and decorating
Paint a room in a weekend
Stage 2 of 5 — Cut in · time budget about six hours of work spread across two days
Stage two of five, cutting in. The walls are washed and dry, the edges are being cut in by brush, and the roller has not been opened yet.
Two days, one room, and the order that makes it possible. The guide runs from clearing the room to lifting the tape, in the order the work happens.
Up next on the bench
four guides
Painting and decorating
Fill and sand before painting
The stage that decides the finish, done properly.
Tiling and splashbacks
Tile a kitchen splashback
Set out from the centre, and the far ends look deliberate.
Weekend schedule
sat and sun| When | Task |
|---|---|
| SAT 08:00 | Clear the room and lift what can be lifted |
| SAT 09:00 | Wash the walls and leave them to dry |
| SAT 11:00 | Fill dents, old fixings and ragged edges |
| SAT 14:00 | Sand the filler level and dust off |
| SAT 16:00 | Mask, then cut in the edges by brushon the bench |
Featured strands
five strands
Painting and decorating
Preparation, filling, cutting in and the coats that follow.
Tiling and splashbacks
Setting out, battens, spacers, cutting and grouting a small run of tile.
Flooring
Squeaks, lifted boards, thresholds and the noises a floor makes.
Storage and shelving
Wall types, matched fixings, levelling and a sensible view of load.
Garden and outdoors
Weather, timber, drainage and the jobs that only work in a dry week.
Workshop notes
from the benchA second coat looks worse before it looks better
Wet paint over dry paint reads as patchy for as long as it takes the new coat to level and dry. Judging a wall halfway through a second coat is how a perfectly good wall ends up with a third.
The only useful time to judge a coat is when it is dry and the light is raking across it from one side. Everything before that is guesswork with a roller in your hand.
How to stop a tile row drifting
A row of tiles fixed onto soft adhesive creeps downhill under its own weight, a millimetre at a time, and nobody notices until the far end.
A timber batten fixed on the line and left in place until the adhesive has set removes the problem entirely. Check the level along the top of every second or third tile as you go, and correct immediately.
What a spirit level cannot tell you about an old wall
A level tells you the truth about gravity. It tells you nothing about whether the result will look right next to a skirting that slopes, a ceiling that dips or a window that was never square.
In an old room the eye compares a new line with the nearest existing one. Sometimes the honest answer is to split the difference deliberately rather than to be perfectly level and visibly wrong.
The order to sand in
Coarse, medium, fine, in that sequence and without skipping. Each grade exists to remove the scratches left by the one before it.
Jumping straight to a fine grade on proud filler takes forever and loads the abrasive. Stopping at a coarse grade leaves scratches that the paint will magnify rather than hide.
Bench facts
grit and drying| 80 grit | Coarse. Stripping back and knocking down filler that stands well proud. |
|---|---|
| 120 grit | Medium. Levelling filler into the surrounding surface. |
| 180 grit | Fine. Taking out the scratches the medium grade left behind. |
| 240 grit | Very fine. A light pass between coats on woodwork, never on fresh filler. |
| Touch dry | The surface no longer marks a finger. It is not yet hard and will still bruise. |
| Recoat | The point at which a further coat can go on without lifting the one beneath. |
| Hard wearing | Days rather than hours. Furniture, tape and cleaning all wait for this. |
Room directory
five rooms
Every guide is filed to the room the work happens in. Open the room directory.