THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 6, 1996 TAG: 9604040265
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: About the Outer Banks
SOURCE: Chris Kidder
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
When my builder told me last fall he was allotting more than $2,000 for painting the interior of my house, I decided right then that I would do the painting myself. I eventually relented and allowed a professional painter to paint the walls.
The trim and touch-up work were something I could handle, I insisted. I had stripped 50 years of paint off the woodwork and kitchen cabinets of one grand old home and repainted a half dozen others,: I knew what I was doing.
Right.
My house has, roughly, 900 linear feet of baseboard and 1,700 feet of window casing. I kept waiting for the trim carpenters to fill the gazillion nail holes in all that trim. When I finally mentioned it, I was informed that filling nail holes was the painter's job.
That was the first clue that I had bitten off more than I wanted to chew.
When one carpenter suggested I use ``White Lightning'' caulk for the ``other'' work, I knew I was in trouble. He kindly explained that, before I painted, I needed to caulk every trim joint and crack.
Four and a half tubes of White Lightning, two jars of wood putty and a pint container of spackling plaster later, I'm just about finished - with the prep work. Then there's sanding and painting, sanding and painting and - if I follow the house painter's advice - a third round of sanding and painting ``to make the finish really nice,'' he said.
I'm not sorry that I'm painting my own trim. I wanted to participate in building the house and this was one of the few ways I could. I saved some money while getting to really know the house. But if you've ever been tempted to think that house painters are overpaid, I'd like to save you the embarrassment of making that mistake. If they do the job well, they're worth every dollar.
I learned more about finishing wood trim. You might think, as I did, that if a trim carpenter does a good job caulk, would be unnecessary. That's not so.
Part of the problem is that drywall, no matter how well installed, is never perfectly straight. The framing underneath is never perfectly straight. My builder used spruce framing, which is straighter - and more expensive - than pine and still the walls dip here and there.
Part of the problem is that unfinished wood has a fairly high moisture content (usually around 14 percent) when it's delivered to a job site. After being inside the house, the wood dries out. As it dries, it shrinks.
I learned that there's a real art to filling nail holes. For wood trim that will be stained or varnished, you can't fill the holes until the first coat of finish is applied because the putty must match the finished color of the wood.
Matching wood color often requires mixing two or more colors of putty. I needed two different colors - one straight from the jar and one a mixture of two stock colors - to match the different areas of grain in my clear yellow pine trim.
While I was trying to slather the wood putty into those tiny little nail holes with a putty knife, the trim carpenter came along, watched for a minute and then commenced teaching me a better way. ``You want as little of the putty to get on the wood as possible,'' he explained, taking just a pinch between his fingers and rubbing it into the hole.
I filled the rest of the holes without the putty knife. It was faster, practically invisible and didn't need extra sanding.
I learned that staining wood is easier than painting. I had planned to paint all my woodwork because I wanted a light, clean look. I had just spent eight years in a house whose pine trim, finished with sanding sealer, had progressively yellowed and darkened over the years. More yellow pine was not what I wanted.
My trim carpenters changed my mind. They worked so hard to fit the pieces together, matching woodgrain, choosing each piece for its look and location, that I hated to cover it all up with paint.
One of the carpenters suggested a white stain, which gives wood a ``pickled'' look. The stain would blend with the walls, giving me the light look I wanted while allowing the grain to show, he said. I was skeptical about the work involved but decided to give it a try.
Staining turned out to be far easier and faster than painting. And the carpenter was right: the white stain toned down the wood so that I still get the clean look. If I'd only discovered this sooner, I would have stained all the woodwork and skipped the paint.
Paint was another education. I knew about oil-based paints and acrylic latex paints, gloss finish, semi-gloss finish, satin (also called low luster) finish and flat paints. But now there's a new paint: a flat latex enamel that gives a wall the scrubbability of gloss finishes but without the shine.
I took my contractor's recommendation to use this new flat enamel on all the walls. It cost about $10 per gallon more than a standard flat latex, but because the painter didn't have to switch between flat and semi-gloss paints I saved money on labor.
The flat enamel looks good and I can vouch for its performance. By the time the house was finished, the plumbers, electricians, HVAC people, carpet, vinyl and cabinet installers and trim carpenters had taken their toll on the walls. I cleaned enough to see that the new paint lived up to its promises and then put away my low-abrasive cleanser. There were so many dings and gouges needing drywall repairs that repainting was necessary.
Another thing I learned with this house building project was that painting wasn't the only thing that would need to be done over. The last two or three weeks before the house is finished is a continual fine-tuning process that brings the same subcontractors back - some three or four times - to do and re-do.
It seems as though the house will never be finished but I think the end is near for the contractor. For me, on the other hand, there's that 2,600 feet of wood trim to stain and paint. MEMO: Send comments and questions to Chris Kidder at P.O. Box 10, Nags Head,
N.C. 27959. Or e-mail her at realkidd(AT)aol.com
by CNB