Empty House…Should You Paint First or Do the Floors First?
If you’ve just bought a property, there is no rule that says you have to move in straight away. An empty house is a great opportunity, so before calling up the packers and movers and getting them to transfer all your things to the new place, consider fixing it up a little and making it your own. Once all your clothes, books, ornaments, cooking utensils, and so on are in place it’s much more difficult to renovate and you might have to consider moving to storage before space is free to renovate.
Once you’ve got an empty room, you’ll have a choice. Do you repaint the walls first or do the floors? It’s the “chicken and egg” question that no one seems to have a definitive answer on!
Martha Stewart’s guidance on renovation tells readers to get the floors done first and to paint last but there are plenty of other sources that put the two tasks in opposite order. So, whose advice do you follow?
The best thing to do depends on your own situation. If you need to make big changes to the room, like knocking in a wall or enlarging windows and doors, it’s obviously best to do that first, but once all the heavy work is done the next step is less clear. It seems intuitive to paint the walls first so you don’t have to worry so much about getting drops and drips on a beautiful new floor. Accidents can just be sanded away before the final polish, right? Unfortunately it’s not quite so simple.
The ideal way forward depends on something as simple as dust. Sanding and doing the other groundwork for new floors puts a lot of dust into the air, and dust and painting don’t mix. The paint and brushes can get contaminated with dust and airborne grime, which will affect both the texture and color of the finished work, or dust particles can settle on a freshly painted surface and stick there. Either way, it’s not good news.
To reduce dust problems, get all the sanding out of the way at once. Prepare the walls and the floor before finishing either one. This way the dust may be bad in the early stage of your renovation project but once it’s settled and gotten rid of, it’s gone for good and you won’t have to worry about it.
Once the sanding is done, move on to the painting. By covering the sanded but unfinished floor with heavy decorator’s paper or dust sheets you can keep paint off, but if a little gets through you don’t have to worry about redoing difficult polishing work. Once the paint is safely dry you can remove the protective floor covering and get on with the last part of the project.
Getting renovation tasks in the right order will help make the process much easy and less stressful. Remember- make major changes, sand back both the floors and walls, paint, then polish. Last of all you can bring in the packers and movers and get your belongings into a beautiful new room.
