Archive for the ‘Painting’ Category

Painting Your Walls with Whiteboard Paint

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Whiteboard paint is a great way to accessorize and add some personality to several different rooms in your home. Although people typically think of whiteboard paint for a child’s room, it actually can be utilized in other rooms of your home as well. Following are some unique ideas as to how to use chalkboard paint in the different rooms of your home.

Chalkboard Paint in a Child’s Bedroom
The most popular place to use Chalkboard paint is in a child’s bedroom. By painting one area of the wall, you can create for your children their very own Chalkboard to draw on and play with.

You might also use the paint on things like tables and closet doors in the room. In fact, with a little Whiteboard paint you can create personalized closet doors for your children, where they can design and draw any type of scene they wish. This can then be changed as often as they like, perhaps even with the seasons or holidays throughout the year.

Whiteboard Paint in the Kitchen
Another great way to use Whiteboard paint is to section off a wall in the kitchen to paint so that you can write down menus or grocery lists. If you don’t want to use the wall, you might take a piece of wood and paint it with Whiteboard paint. Then you can hang it up and write your weekly menus on the board for all to see.

As long as you don’t mind your kids drawing on the refrigerator, you can use Chalkboard paint there as well. What will result is your very own personalized fridge, freshened each day with new drawings from your kids. Chalkboard paint also works great on your backsplash. This gives you a great place where you can write down messages and recipes, or just doodle while you’re cooking dinner.

Chalkboard Paint in the Home Office
Chalkboard paint can really be used to your advantage in a home office. Paint a section of the wall, creating your very own message board or monthly/weekly calendar. Having a large board on the wall for your important tasks and items is much easier than trying to use a small desk calendar that you might not even notice every day. Now you’ve also given your family members a convenient place to leave messages for you, preventing them from bothering you when you are working.

Whiteboard Paint in a Game Room
If you have a game room, perhaps with a pool table, then Chalkboard paint makes the perfect place to create your own scoreboard. Remember, games such as darts and some card games often need a scoreboard as well. You might also play up this area with a nice wooden frame, or when not in use, it makes a perfect space to add a quote or inspirational message.

What better way to add a touch of personality to your walls in your home than with some Whiteboard paint? Beyond the child’s bedroom, Chalkboard paint can be used in so many different ways in any home.

About the Writer
Leon Tuberman has been in the home furnishings and interior design industry for four decades. He owns and manages a popular furniture store in California. They have a large inventory of handcrafted Amish built solid oak furniture for your bedroom, dining room and living room. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shopping for a oak bed for your bedroom or a wood dining table for your dining room then they carry everything you need.

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Spice Up Your Home With Exterior Home Painting

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

To be truly satisfied with the quality of any contracted work on one’s home, it is a great idea to make a list of goals that are directly related to how you expect your home to look once the paint job is complete. Furthermore, a paint job to the exterior portions of a home requires some commitment to the process, as well as prep work.

For exterior home painting, homeowners ought to consider how much of the initial prep work will be taken care of by the actual contracted painting company. To successfully apply paint to the home, areas of the home must be cleaned, scoured, and prepared for the entire process. Part of this can be done by the homeowner and part of it may be completed by the painting company. Not all painting companies will handle these procedures for the homeowner and it is the homeowner’s responsibility to investigate how the process must be done to ensure satisfaction. As a consumer, painting the entire exterior of a home can seem intimidating, yet there is a set protocol which is typically well known amongst professional painting companies.

Exterior home painting costs vary from home to home obviously and the size of the home will figure in, as will labor related to the contours of the home and various other details. A trained contractor can discuss what charges will be assessed and ought to have answers to your questions, or at least a helpful demeanor with the desire to accomplish the job to your satisfaction. It never hurts to do your own research of course, and many are finding that they are better off if they do understand the process of painting a home better prior to hiring someone.

It doesn’t hurt to serve lemonade and snacks to the painting crew working on your home. Exterior home painting can be quite a tiring task and many homeowners readily hire contractors to do the work for them because the work itself is quite taxing. The same painting crew will likely be working on the home for an established period of time, granted there are no challenges along the way. Weather can factor in and painters are generally aware of such hindrances. For homeowners, set backs can seem challenging and frustrating, but it is all part of the process. It is always a great idea to ask questions about the progress of the project, stay informed, and get an idea of how the crew is doing. These are all ways to support your level of satisfaction. Knowledge is power.

To learn more about exterior home painting, ask questions, ask neighbors what work they have had done on their home, and research online. Get an idea of the kind of company you are supporting. Are they benefiting the community? What kinds of ethics are they supporting? What are you looking for in a painting company? What is most important to you? These are all great questions to ask. It may seem that getting your home repainted is a pain, but it need not be. There are a number of professionals that have the ability to serve and maintain a standard of service that is supportive of their clients’ satisfaction.

More information on a exterior home painting and a College Works Painting [http://www.collegeinternpainting.com] in your area is just a click away.

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Interior Painting Tips – How to Properly Apply Deep Tinted Paints

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Interior painting with deep tinted paints such as midnight blue, pumpkin orange and passion red can be a very challenging experience for any homeowner. The one thing virtually all deep tinted paints have in common is they are mixed in a neutral base. The neutral base that these colors are mixed in offer little help in coverage. Before the colorant is added you can look straight through to the bottom of the can. So what steps can a homeowner take to improve coverage and save time.

Below are 6 important things you must do to assure coverage while using deep tinted paints for your interior painting projects.

1. The most important thing you should do is prime your walls with a primer that has been tinted as close to the top coat as possible. These tinted primers have a lot more pigment and will cover better, making the transition to your dark color neutral based color easier. This will reduce cost and time.

2. Pay attention to your spread rate. Avoid over overspreading deep tinted color paints. Dry rolling will only reduce the hiding power. Apply paint at the manufactures recommended spread rate.

3. Use a good quality roller cover. The ideal nap thickness for deep tinted paint is a 3/8 inch nap. A shorter nap than this causes over spreading of paint and reduces hiding power. A nap longer than this creates an unattractive stipple effect in the deep tinted paints.

4. The method you use to apply the paint is important. Make sure you roll into the brushed areas while the paint is still wet. This prevents what is called framing. Deep tinted paints seem to look better when applied in a straight up and down motion from ceiling to floor. Also, avoid build up of paint at the leading edge of the roller. Try to feather any leading edge of paint left by the roller by using a straight up and down motion.

5. Give proper drying time before re coating. The high levels of colorant in the paint slow down the drying process of deeply tinted paints. Applying paint too soon will create unsightly textures.

6. Avoid touching up deep tinted paints. If you discover that after several top coats you still have a few areas that seem thin then re-apply paint to the entire wall. It is very difficult to touch up these walls without looking touched up.

Keep in mind, deeply tinted paints have different properties than white tinted base paints. Most light and medium tone colors are mixed in a white tinting base, giving them a much greater ability to hide. They spread differently and dry down differently. Avoid the mistake of getting in too big of a hurry while using deep tinted paint. They are known for their capricious nature.

Nicky Taylor CEO Of http://www.home-painting-services.com/interiorpainting.html – Visit our site and see what all the noise is about. Click here for our interior painting and exterior painting section. Our painting tips section offers more information on valuable topics pertaining to home improvement.

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Finding a Child Safe Paint That is Non Toxic and Zero VOC in an Over-Toxicated World

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

So, I am eight months pregnant and obsessed with getting my home ready for my new baby. Apparently this is a completely normal and, if my pregnancy books are correct, a scientifically proven reaction to being on the brink of bringing a new life into the world!

Most moms-to-be have this ‘nesting instinct’–see, there is even a somewhat scientific name for this craziness. But it does make perfect sense. Baby ready to come, mom needs to have somewhere to put the baby. But a simple room won’t do.

Oh no.

I need a brilliant, beautifully colored and gorgeous nursery for my new prodigy. And this is where my dilemma started.

I’m pretty careful about all things. I want no trans-fats, no toxins, completely sustainable, healthy for my planet, eat-local-act-global (you get my drift) products and have been doing a ton of research on all things related to my family and new baby. So in this vein, I did some reading on child safe non toxic paint. I always knew that I wanted a low odor paint, because somehow that ‘fresh paint smell’ has never really smelled that ‘fresh’ to me, and I was a bit dubious about what I was smelling anyway. And I am very pleased that I looked into this.

Apparently paints contain VOCs, volatile organic compounds that are not so great for the environment–they cause smog and affect the ozone layer–but are even worse for your home environment. The VOCs and toxins in these paints greatly reduce the air quality in your home and can lead to horrible things like throat, eye and nose problems, headaches, and even cancer. So while I am planning on being all natural with my baby’s diet, I realized that it would be for nothing if I didn’t paint his room with a completely zero toxin paint.

I also read that pregnant women shouldn’t paint or be in the same area as those who are painting rooms, as it can affect your unborn baby. Made me really think about the threat that these paint fumes would be to my completely unprotected, new offspring sleeping peacefully in a crib in a newly painted, poisonous room.

Thankfully, there are new paints available that are completely free of toxins and are totally child safe. Look for the zero VOC, zero toxin products opposed to the ones that are low in VOCs or low in toxins. Some manufacturers are less than truthful with the way in which they communicate their ingredients on their labels and put the number of VOCs per liter as opposed to the actual number in a gallon–the normal size of a can of paint.

The smell is also something that I was right to be wary of. I learned that the smell of new paint is actually the solvents evaporating into the environment. These solvents are the things that contain the toxins and carcinogens, so the smell is not a good sign. Go for low odor–everything has an odor so you are not going to find a zero odor paint–but if it has zero toxins and zero VOCs on the label the low smell that you get should be safe anyway.

The new paints have a reputation for not being as good as the old reliable, poisonous paints. However, there are a few new companies out there who are really doing the research on this and are finding completely new ways to create paint. These guys’ durability is as good as, if not better than, the traditional stuff. Many of them come in a huge variety of colors too–so don’t feel that you can’t have the nursery of your dreams in any color or colors that you want because you want to be healthy. Just do some research and you’ll be safe!

Delilah Jones is an expecting mother with a passion for zero VOC paint and its impact to consumer safety. She is also interested in how a 100 percent non toxic paint and low odor paint can correlate for baby and pregnant women.

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