DIY: Painting wood paneling

When we moved into our house we knew we had to paint the sunroom. The vibe was too lodge - but it's painted now!! (Don't mind the random things on the table. It's displaced due to another project going on in the house - as always)

 

 

Here's the steps we took to paint the room

 

1. Tape off everything. We taped off the floor (with rosin paper). We taped off the windows. And then we taped plastic over the already taped off windows (This double layered taping really helped with the take down - because in the past we've had to use a pocket knife to "encourage" the tape off due to paint build up. But with the two layers, it peeled off swimmingly!). We taped one door off completely (I chose to paint inside the door frames by hand to make it easier). For the other door, we used two sheets of plastic that over-lapped so we could get in and out of the room.

 

 

2. Painted the ceiling. Our ceiling was green originally so we chose to paint it white before painting the walls. Since I share the good, the bad and the ugly, I'll share this. For the ceiling paint, we used left over ceiling paint from the old owners. Even though it said "brilliant white," it ended up with a slightly pink hue. We thought it may just be reflecting the red rosin paper on the floor so we kept going. In case you were wondering, it wasn't reflecting. So we ended up having to paint the ceiling again at the end up the project. This worked out because then we were able to caulk between the wall paneling and the ceiling, and then paint over it. It gave it a more finished look in the end. But still - pinkish ceiling paint!?

 

 

3. Paint. Paint. Paint. We chose to use a spray gun since we had A LOT of painting to do. Reading the direction, we realized we would need to thin out the paint. So following the directions, we used the Paint Easy paint thinner. And then we started painting. For this, I would DEFINITELY use a mask of some sort. There was an intense haze going on so we Mike would do one wall and step out for fresh air. Then go back at it. Probably not the safest, we know. We worked our way from top to bottom on a wall

 

 

 

 

(The tape you see on the ceiling was use trying to keep a clean line between the ceiling and the wall. This was before we ended up realizing we would need to simply paint the ceiling the same color as the wall.)

 

5. Clean up. We I took down all the tape and plastic. You can see in the picture below the two layers of tape we did. The first layer of plastic/tape had all the paint build up. So the second layer of tape was easy to take off and keep a clean edge.

 

 

 

Done, right? That's what we thought, but not so much. Even though we used a sprayer to paint, it didn't get into all the nail holes and crevices of the panels.

 

 

 

 

 

And let me tell you, there were a lot of nail holes. Thankfully, my dad is the best and wanted to lend a helping hand. So we got to work filling in the nail holes with Elmer's Wood Filler in white. Then we repainting (by hand with a foam brush), over the wood filler. We also used a foam brush to get paint into the crevices so the paneling didn't look like it had random gaps all over the wall. In hindsight, I wish we had filled in the holes between paint coats two and three so we wouldn't have had to repaint over the wood filler.

 

 

But I suppose it all paid off - look at these before and after pictures!

 

 

 

Needs decorations, I know.