Interior Painting FAQ's
New Construction and Major Renovations
When should I schedule my painting estimate?
What is Monk’s Painting’s responsibility on a new construction job?
What goes first, the floors or the painting?
What is the right way to paint new construction windows and doors?
How do you prime and paint my walls?
Q: When should I schedule my painting estimate?
You should schedule the estimate for your painting once your sheetrock has been installed. It is our experience that once your sheetrock has been hung, you are about 6 weeks away from painting. Your contractors still need to tape, spackle and sand your sheetrock, install your trim and hang your interior doors and install the kitchen cabinets among other things. We do not recommend getting your painting estimate before the sheetrock has been hung because too many things can change. Once the sheetrock is up, most surprises have been found and the house tends to stay the way it is.
Q: When do you start painting?
We want to start painting when the carpenters are completely finished. You will not save time on a new construction job by having us start work while the carpenters are working in a different part of the house. Carpenters create lots of dust which will inevitably end up in your trim paint and ruin the finish. Carpenters will also be changing small things throughout the house on their punch list until they leave. A small change for the carpenters can easily force us to re-paint entire walls or rooms after they have been completed.
We are comfortable working in the house with most tile and kitchen cabinet contractors. Almost any other contractor should be finished before we start painting. You will want your electrician to return after we are completely finished to hang your actual light fixtures. If the electrician hangs your fixtures before we paint, we will either paint around them or he will need to return to re-hang them when the job is completed.
Q: What is Monk’s Painting’s responsibility on a new construction job?
Generally speaking…. On a new construction or major renovation project, we will not be responsible for any work on the new sheetrock. Any wall repair, tape lines or corners on the new sheetrock will be addressed by the sheetrock contractor. If the house is a mix of new sheetrock and old walls, we are usually responsible for repairing the old walls. We always take care of caulking and filling nail holes in the trim. We are not responsible for rebuilding new trim that was installed with large dents or gaps. If you have a new banister or railing being installed, it is important to find out who is responsible for staining it. Sometimes we stain it and sometimes the floor contractor stains it.
Q: What goes first, the floors or the painting?
The absolute best situation for the homeowner is to have the floor contractor complete the sanding, staining and one coat of polyurethane before we arrive. We will then protect the floors with resin paper while we paint. When we finish, the floor contractor comes back and applies his final coat of polyurethane.
If the floor contractor applies all 3 coats and finishes before we arrive, the painting job becomes very difficult. We have trouble taping to the new polyurethane on the floor without damaging it, we will be creating dust in the house that will end up on the new polyurethane and if a ladder or bucket scratches the uncured polyurethane, it is difficult to repair. We have no choice but to stand on your new floors while we work. On the other hand, if the floor contractor doesn’t start his sanding until after we finish, you should expect to find dust on your newly painted walls. The floor contractor will also ding up the paint job on the baseboard and may hit some of the walls with the handle of his sander as he sands the floor.
No matter what, the floor contractor needs to leave and return to the job between coats of stain and polyurethane. It does not add any work or labor for him to delay the final coat by a week or two. If we paint after the sanding and before the final coat of polyurethane, you will find most rooms dust-free and coated with fresh paint and polyurethane. Your floor and walls will be in perfect condition. Only the kitchens and bathrooms will have any dust in them.
Most reputable floor contractors have worked this way and will not be surprised if you ask for this arrangement. If a floor contractor doesn’t want to do this, it is probably because someone wants to get the job finished quickly so they can get paid and not because they want to give you the best job possible.
All trim gets caulked and the nail holes get two coats of an epoxy wood filler. We then prime all trim with an oil based primer. If your trim comes pre-primed, we will be priming it again. We need to apply this coat of primer to cover the wood filler and caulk we have applied to your nail holes and seams. After we prime your trim we apply two coats of paint. We sand your trim after we fill your nail holes, after we prime it and after the first coat of paint. Monk’s Painting recommends oil based paint for interior trim. There is a difference between how the oil and latex looks when it dries. Oil based paint is also easier to sand and will give you a smoother finish on your trim. We recommend a semi-gloss finish for your trim.
Q: What is the right way to paint new construction windows and doors?
It is extremely important that all sides of new construction windows and exterior doors are primed and painted. If you have a problem with your windows years after your job is completed, the first thing the window manufacturer will check is to see if the sides of your windows have been primed and painted. If the sides of your windows are not painted, your warranty is probably void. Because windows tilt to the inside, we consider this the responsibility of the interior painter. Because we do not want to build up too much paint on the sides of the windows, we give the sides one coat of primer and one coat of paint.
When we are hired to re-paint new houses several years after they have been completed, we find bare, unpainted wood on the sides of new windows on a regular basis.
We will paint the tops of all doors in your home. If you would like us to paint the bottom of the interior doors, we need you to have the contractor remove and re-hang the doors for us. In our opinion, it is not important to paint the bottoms of most interior doors. We think that it is important to paint all 6 sides of a new exterior door. New exterior doors have the same warranty considerations as new windows. All 6 sides of the door must be painted or stained for the warranty to be in effect.
Q: How do you prime and paint my walls?
We recommend having your new sheetrock walls primed immediately after the taping and spackling job but before any of the interior trim is hung. We can prime the sheetrock of most any house (up to 20,000 sq ft) in 2 days. It does not affect our price if we prime the walls and then return in several weeks to finish the job or if we prime and paint in one trip at the end of the job.
Priming before the trim is installed primarily allows the homeowner to get a higher quality job with less headaches from his sheetrock contractor and finish carpenters. Once the walls are a uniform white, it is easier to tell if you are happy with the sheetrock job. It is easy to tell if the seams, corners and screw heads are evenly finished. If you need to call the sheetrock contractor back to do some touch-up work, there is plenty of time to arrange this without holding anyone up at the end of the job. If the plan is to have us prime and paint in one trip at the end of the job, there can be a lot of disruption to your time table if you need to get the sheetrock contractor back while we are standing around waiting to paint. Priming the walls before the finish trim is installed also makes it easier for your finish carpenters to see exactly how their trim looks on a white wall. It can be hard to see exactly how big the gaps between the wall and trim are when the wall isn’t primed first. In addition, having us prime early ensures that all your sheetrock is sealed up before any cabinets are installed.
After priming, we coat all walls with two coats of Latex paint. We use Benjamin-Moore and Sherwin-Williams products. We recommend a flat finish for your ceiling, a matte finish for most walls and an eggshell finish for your kitchen and bathrooms. On a large job it may be worthwhile for you to hire a color consultant.
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