New Home - Terrible touch up paint job - help

[Josh Buckley]

Hello all,

New to the forum. Just bought my first home and have been reading feverishly to learn how to handle many of the projects we won't to accomplish.

The first on the list is repairing drywall cracksand repainting. I know this is a bit off topic for this forum but figured I would toss out there to see if anyone has any input.

First room I am doing is for the storks delivery. The touch up paint job the left us throughout the home is awful, streaks and run marks all over trim and wall.

I plan on trimming out most of the home, but will start with the basic repair of this room.

Question is how to best remove these straks, drips and and damage to the standard would trim. Do i just sand by hand until I can sand no more, or is there a better way of getting the paint off?

In terms of repairing dings and notches in the trim, is there a good way to repair and sand to restore a little or is it just a lost cause.

Sorry for the run on, any insight would be appreciated!

[Hunter Wallace]

Hi Josh,

Ahhh, the joys of home ownership!!

The easiest (well, less messy) way of removing drips
is just to carefully shave them away with a razor
blade, either the one with the solid back in one of those
boxcutter thingys, or with a utility knife blade, maybe with
a bit of electrical tape or something on the top side
(just makes it more comfortable).
Don't try to cut/scrape it all away at once, just
"sneak up" on it until it's smooth.
The sanding way will work, but experience has shown me
that you'll end up sanding off the paint AROUND the drip
before you are able to get all of the drip off.

As for the drywall cracks, you can fill them with mud till
the stork comes home, but over time they will continue to
crack unless you cover the crack over with some paper tape
first. Nobody expects first time drywallers to do a great job,
but as long as you apply small amounts of mud and DO NOT
sand between coats you should be OK. If you sand through the
mud and hit the paper you'll have fuzzy patches sticking out of
your paint. I'd rather you did 10 super lite coats and not sand
than do the standard 3 coats and risk putting on too much mud.
Any other questions like this I'm sure myself or some other folks
should be able to help you with.

Hunter

[Josh Buckley]

Hunter, thanks for the advice! Apologize for the poor typing above. Trying to get organized for the weekend and home depot opens at 630!

Its funny you mention the dry wall. I read that if I made even cuts and removed and replaced a square section with some type of backing, this would work out the best. I have managed to sand between mud coats and keep getting to the patch without getting the sides even. I Plan on reapplying and until i get it right. As much as I try to get a clean thin cover of mud it continues to not apply neatly, not sure how to get smooth clean applications.

Any suggestions on addressing dings to the trim?

[Bill Houghton]

Any suggestions on addressing dings to the trim?

Is it painted trim? If so, depending on the size of the ding:

1. For small dings, use vinyl spackle. Do NOT use the lightweight stuff; good in theory, not so good in practice.

2. For larger dings, use Fixall.

Both of these shrink a little in drying, so you can either overfill the ding (my approach), or fill twice: once to form a base for a second run that fills in the little depression left when it shrinks.

Both sand out pretty well; if you find the sandpaper's loading up, the filler's not yet dry enough. I like to fill toward the end of the day, and sand the next day. For flat surfaces, use a sanding block of some kind, which can be just a chunk of wood the right size. For curves, you can buy little rubber shapey things, which help (Lee Valley offers a full set for about $13, but then you'd have to pay shipping; not sure what home center or paint center prices would be), or wrap the sandpaper around chunks of dowel or whatever. Depends on how much or how little money you've got.

[Josh Buckley]

Sounds good, thanks, I will see what HD has. I have been using 150 or 180 sand papaer on the drywall spackle, should that be sufficient for this purpose also? I have read some people going to 220, but that may have been for unfinished trim and only to smooth joints.

The other part of this project involved removing a postage stamp like piece of drywall from the top right corner of one of the doors to the room. there was a large crack that worked diagonally from the trim of the door up about 12 inches.

On my m-in-law's advice, who we refer to as the Bob V of the family, we removed the trim on both sides of the door and adjusted the door frame, which we believe contributed to the above crack. the door was not sitting level in the frame. Now I am faced with figuring out how to replace the trim. I was going to dry fit and see how much the angles changed and then try and adjust and put back up. We will see how that goes.

[Bill Houghton]

put a little white or yellow glue on the joints as you refit the trim. It seems to help keep the joints closed.

If you find that you can't get a tight fit, either because doing so would leave your trim too short or because you're still learning (I'm still learning after 35 years in this house and 40 years of theoretical adulthood), rather than the glue, put some latex acrylic caulk in the joint, put the trim up in a way that squeezes the caulk out, then use a damp paper towel to smooth it. Done carefully, this will be visible only to you and your relatives, and not all of them. Or, of course, you can step on over to your local home center and buy replacement trim, but if you've got a baby on the way, time is of the essence (oh, and wait until you HAVE the baby and find out how much can be done in how little time and on how little sleep).

Congratulations, by the way, both on the home - we didn't own until our sons were long out of the house - and on your approaching fatherhood. Both of these events will bring you some grief and much joy.

[Josh Buckley]

Bit the bullet and went and picked up replacement poplar trim. Previous trim had too many dings to sand everything.

Also picked up a Makita 1030 scms and bosch DAD 220 to help with the miter angles.

Will be replacing door and window casing, base board and adding mfd crown.

First try at all of this... very excited about the tools... looking to try to make a toy box after i finish the room.

[Josh Buckley]

putting up my door casings and getting respectable mitered corners for paintable trim, for my level and what i can live with.

Taking very slow and using my bosch miter angle to check all angles as much as possible.

Having a problem with one miter. the piece going up the side of the door, when mitered, appears longer than the miterd part of my header piece. Could it be something with the trim or am I just overlooking something and making a rookie mistake?