Painting The Ceiling

No-one said painting the ceiling was easy, especially if you live in an old house with high ceilings! As you can't turn your house upside down to paint the ceiling - what do you do?

If you are repainting several rooms it might be worthwhile calling in the professionals to paint the ceilings for you.  If you decide to do it yourself then check out the list of what you will need to get started.

Supplies

To paint the ceiling you need:

· A good step ladder

· A ceiling paint roller with a hood. This will help prevent the paint splattering all over the floor

· A ceiling extension handle for the roller

· Good one coat ceiling paint - after all you don't want to give it a second coat - do you?

· A paint bucket with a grid is easier to use with a roller for ceilings than a paint tray

· Drop cloths - lots of them

· Cut-in paint brush

· Masking tape

Preparation

Painting a ceiling can be tiring. So make sure you give yourself a whole day for the project from start to finish.

· Remove everything you can from the room, and put the rest in the center of the room and cover with drop cloths. Don't forget to take pictures and paintings off the wall too, you don't want them to get spattered with paint

· Cover or remove light fixtures and fittings

· Cover the floor with drop cloths. It is best to use heavy duty drop cloths but you can use old sheets or newspapers at a pinch. Stay away from thin plastic as you can slip

· Brush the ceiling with a broom. If you choose not to wash the ceiling you need to at least brush away cobwebs, flaky paint, and other debris.

· Professionals wash the ceiling with a damp sponge mop, and then rinse it and let it dry before repairing any flaky spots or rough patches. However if you have a good quality one coat paint you can probably get away with not washing the ceiling unless it is really dirty or is nicotine yellow

· Scrape off flaky paint and then repair any rough spots by sanding them down and applying filler or spackle where necessary, remembering to sand it down again after it's dry. Applying primer to these bare spots before painting will make sure that the color on your newly painted ceiling will be even.

· Mask the wall where it meets the ceiling if you want to make sure you have a clean line. This is especially important when the colors of the ceiling and the wall are going to be different

Painting

Now you are ready to get down to the actual painting.

· Paint a 3-4" wide cut-in line around the ceiling where it meets the wall and cut-in around any ceiling light-fixtures

· Put your roller in the paint bucket, using the grid to make sure you don't overload it with too much paint

· Start painting in sections across the width of the ceiling as this is much easier than trying to paint the length of the room

· Either make a zigzag and then fill it in by working back into the wet paint at the wall or paint by working in straight lines in manageable blocks. Start painting a new section at a distance from the part you have already painted and work back into the existing wet paint

· Make sure you overlap and blend in the sections to avoid streaks and get an even finish over the whole ceiling

Now that wasn't so hard, was it?