My wife and I just bought our first home, and naturally, one of the first things we wanted to do was repaint. I'm handy enough, but I've never painted a room, and so was intimidated at getting it wrong and wasting money on paint that we would incorrectly apply.
Unfortunately, the person we hired to paint for us ended up doing an equally bad job. So, I have become an immediate convert to DIYing as much as I can to avoid feeling like a mug in the future.
Fixing this now feels more complicated than the original task of painting it well would have been. There are big sections of the wall that are mostly fine, but there are also several issues: there are super visible, dried paint drips down large sections of the wall; there are drips of paint and paint splatters all over the skirting boards; paint is poorly cut in in many places; the section of wall behind the radiator is mostly unpainted; in some sections of wall, the underlying colour is poking through; and many of the sockets have paint on them.
I want to do the best I can to fix this, but I have a bunch of questions that I was hoping people who know better (you) could help me with:
- Our painter/decorator convinced us we didn't need any primer, and he didn't prep the walls in any way. Should I treat this as starting from scratch and sand/prime the walls?
- I don't really understand the principles I should follow to maintain a clean cut-in line when we meet the woodwork. When do I establish the clean cut-in line, and how do I correct mistakes? I.e., do I start by painting as clean a line as I can in the brown, and then correct in white on the woodwork? Do you do this the other way around? Does it matter?
- If I want to correct the cut-in line, can I just paint in one section of an otherwise dry wall and expect to see no visible distinction between what is now dry and what I paint over? In case it matters, this is wet-edge paint (F&B, colour: Jitney). Same question applies to areas that have the underlying green poking through – would I just be painting over this section, or do I need a second coat over the whole wall?
- I'm almost out of paint, so will need to buy more, but I understand different tins of even the same colour can present differently on the wall. Anything I can do to remedy this? I ready somewhere about buying a tin and mixing whatever I have remaining from the original tin into the new one?
- I'm guessing best approach to dealing with the drip marks is to sand them away?
- There are sections of wall where it looks like the underlying wallpaper is pulling away in the corners (have attached an image showing this). How would you fix this?
I've been watching a few tutorials online and so have a reasonable idea by now of what's required, but any and all tips very much appreciated. Thanks!