The days are longer, warmer and summer is just around the corner. Now might be the perfect time to look around your home and see which rooms need a little pick-me-up.
Whether you are getting your nursery ready for your little one, or the playroom is starting to look a little grubby, rooms where your children spend the most time can often be much improved by putting on a fresh new coat of paint.
Painting a room is an easy weekend project, one that you can do on your own, as long as you have the right paint and the right tools.
To get some painting tips to make this project even easier, we spoke to our painter Pete Conway with Nippon Enterprises.
While painting is one of the easiest renovations you can do in your home, you want to ensure that safety is a priority, using environmentally-friendly paint that won’t off-gas, which reduces the air quality in the room.
“ICI Paints has the perfect product for painting a kid’s room,” Conway says. “Their Lifemaster product line was the first in Canada to be truly zero VOC (volatile organic compounds).”
When it comes to your kids, you want the highest standard in green products. This paint sets the green building standard for paint products. One other unique quality is that it is virtually odorless, with no lingering chemical smell as it dries. A great benefit of this is that you can paint and occupy in the same day.
Safety should always come first, but any room that is at the mercy of sticky little fingers also has to be durable. You want to be able to wash your walls without worrying about the wear. You also want to make sure that crayon, muddy fingerprints and food residue will come away without marks.
A paint that is 100 per cent acrylic is durable and easy to clean. The paint should also have a surface protector that helps to hide and touch up, while drying to a uniform finish that can withstand repeated washing.
Before you start applying paint to any surface, make sure they are as clean as possible. “Remove any dirt and grease on the walls with a TSP (trisodium phosphate) solution and rinse them with water,” Conway says. “Lightly sand the walls with 120-grit sand paper.”
Make sure to protect the rest of your room, by putting drop cloths over the floors, and tape off the trim with one-inch tape.
Other supplies you will need to make your painting experience that much easier is a two-and-a-half cut-in brush, to navigate around tighter areas, and a 20-millimetre roller sleeve. “Everything can be cleaned with water, so cleanup should be easy,” Conway says.
The great thing about Lifemaster paint is that it is available in primer, ceiling flat, eggshell and semi-gloss finish, so you can paint every substrate in the room - including the trim.
With summer just around the corner, a lighter, brighter shade in your kid’s room can be just the thing to freshen up the look. Fun colors that work well in a nursery or playroom are cheery yellows and oranges, or warm greens, like a mellow sage.
With the right tools and a little bit of elbow grease, your children’s rooms will be looking fresh for the new season.
For more information, contact Stepper Custom Homes at 403-250-1033 or visit www.stepperhomes.com and at www.facebook.com/stepperhomes.
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