Do thorough room preparation: covering, taping, and surface cleaning

Before opening a paint can, invest time in comprehensive room preparation. Proper prep is the single most effective way to prevent messes and achieve a professional finish.

How to Do It

1. Move and cover: Remove all furniture possible from the room. Push remaining large items to the center and cover completely with canvas drop cloths or plastic sheeting. Cover the entire floor with drop cloths, overlapping edges and taping seams.
2. Remove hardware: Take off outlet covers, switch plates, curtain rod brackets, door hardware, and light fixture covers. Place screws inside the cover plates so they do not get lost. Tape over exposed outlets and switches with painter's tape.
3. Clean walls: Wipe walls with a damp cloth or sponge to remove dust, cobwebs, and grime. For kitchens, use a TSP (trisodium phosphate) solution or degreaser to remove grease films that prevent paint adhesion.
4. Repair: Fill all nail holes, cracks, and dents with spackle. Sand smooth once dry. Caulk gaps along trim, baseboards, and ceiling lines.
5. Tape edges: Apply painter's tape along all edges you want to protect -- ceiling line, trim, baseboards, window and door frames. Press the tape edge firmly with a putty knife or plastic card to seal it against paint bleed.
6. Protect fixtures: Cover light fixtures, ceiling fans, and built-in shelving with plastic bags secured with tape.

Why It Works

Paint goes where gravity and brushes take it. Drop cloths catch the inevitable drips and roller splatter. Tape creates crisp boundaries between surfaces. Removing hardware eliminates the tedious work of trying to paint around screws and cover plates and produces cleaner results. Cleaning walls ensures paint bonds permanently instead of peeling. Every minute spent on prep saves multiple minutes of cleanup and touch-up later.

Tips

• Canvas drop cloths ($15-30) are superior to plastic because they absorb drips instead of letting paint puddle and get tracked around on shoe soles; plastic sheeting is fine for covering furniture
• Use FrogTape (green) for the sharpest tape lines -- its PaintBlock technology reacts with latex paint to form a micro-barrier that prevents bleed; standard blue tape allows some paint creep
• Remove tape within 1 hour of painting while the paint is still slightly tacky -- pull slowly at a 45-degree angle away from the painted surface
• If tape has been on more than 24 hours, score the edge with a utility knife before pulling to prevent it from tearing the fresh paint
• Expect prep to take 30-60% of the total project time for a quality result -- this is normal and not wasted time
• Label each outlet cover and its screws with a small piece of masking tape noting the location (e.g., "living room east wall") for easy reinstallation
• Common mistake: using newspaper instead of proper drop cloths -- paint soaks through newspaper onto the floor, and wet newspaper sticks to shoes and gets tracked everywhere