Painting, like the tango, requires the right moves in the right order. The job will go faster, it'll need less touch-up and, most important, the room will look better. Once you've cleaned the surfaces and repaired any damage, paint the large, flat areas first ceiling and walls. Then go back and do the trim, a slower and more exacting process. Use water-based latex paint for walls and ceilings except in bathrooms and kitchens, where you'd use latex-acrylic or alkyd enamel. Trim paint is almost always enamel.
Step by Step 1. Prepare the room. Repair and prepare the surfaces. Remove all the furniture you can. Move the rest to the center of the room, and cover it with a drop cloth. Use a smaller drop cloth, one you can move around, in the area you're painting.
2. Edge the ceiling. With a 4-inch synthetic-bristle brush, paint around the perimeter of the ceiling where it meets the crown molding or, if there's no molding, the wall itself. (This is called "cutting" the ceiling.) Be as neat as you can, but if you get a little paint on the molding, don't agonize; you'll be painting it later. If you're sure of hand and eye, you may be able to do this freehand. Less sure of yourself? Try a trim guard or painter's masking tape to keep paint where you want it.
3. Paint the ceiling. Next, grab your paint roller and paint the large expanse of ceiling you just outlined.
4. Edge the walls. Go back to your 4-inch brush and paint the perimeter of the walls: above baseboards, around all door and window trim, and in corners where a roller can't reach.
5. Paint the walls. Back to the roller, this time to fill in the walls. Work from top to bottom in workable squares say 4 feet by 4 feet.
6. Paint the trim. Time to break out the enamel. Using a 3-inch brush, paint the crown and baseboard moldings doors and windows, too, if they're the same color. If your doors, windows or other features have a special highlight color, paint that next. Finish the job by painting the door and window trim.
Tips From the Pros
The professional painters we know don't clean and reuse expensive roller covers. They keep the covers wet, enclosing them in plastic wrap during the lunch hour, then throw them away at the end of the day. (Cleaning a roller cover takes gallons of water and plenty of toil, and it still won't perform like a new one no matter how much you scrub.) A midprice cover is good enough.
Paint brushes are another matter. Most professionals avoid cheap brushes and will happily pay an extra five bucks it buys you much better results. Pros look for brushes with "flagged" bristle tips that look like hair with split ends, all packed together. Unless the detail work is very fine, most pros work with at least a 3-inch brush, plus a 4-inch one if possible.
TOOLS AND MATERIALS
4-inch synthetic-bristle brush
Drop cloths
Trim guard
Painter's masking tape
Paint roller and pan set
Paint
Roller covers
3-inch natural-bristle brush or synthetic-bristle brush
