How To Repaint Your Home Without Taking Out A Second Mortgage

June 15th, 2012 Home

The hassle and expense of painting your home is not something you think about when you’re a kid dreaming about owning your own house. Once you become a homeowner, though, the prospect of putting a fresh coat on your walls and ceilings can be almost terrifying. If you apply a little common sense, you’ll discover that there are some great tricks you can use to keep the cost of a new paint job down. Here are just a few of them:

Thorough preparation is always a good idea. In order to minimize the cost of a new paint job, you need to have an accurate idea of just how big it is. This means you should go to work with the tape measure and the notebook long before you commit yourself to repainting. You want to walk into the home improvement store with a very exact figure for the square footage you intend to paint.

Although it should be obvious, it bears stating that if you intend to get your painting done for the least possible amount of money, you’ll be doing it yourself. Be prepared for the demands this will place on you; the painting itself will take a lot of time, as will the preparation and clean-up. You want to handle all of your painting in the smallest possible number of sessions, so clearing out a space in your schedule is an excellent idea.

One way that you may be able to realize some significant savings is by making use of your social resources. Check around with your friends and family to see if anyone has done painting work of their own recently. You may be able to score some usable supplies or paint for free, or at least for cheap.

If minimizing cost is your number one priority, you should be prepared to compromise on colors. Check store advertisements online and in the paper; you might find a great deal on a color you weren’t considering. Even if the selection of colors you have to work with is very limited, try to stick with neutral tones that are easy to match and easy to paint over in the future. Although the traditional method for interior painting calls for using a lighter shade on ceilings, you might save yourself time and money by matching ceilings to walls.

Finally, although everything has been concerned with economy up to this point, think very carefully before you sacrifice paint quality for monetary savings. “Paint is paint” is true only up to a certain point. Be wary of saving money by using bargain-basement paint that will have to be re-done in just a few years. A little online research can help steer you away from brands that sacrifice durability for low prices.

Repainting your home is one of the best steps you can take to freshen up its appearance and make it feel new again. If you tackle a paint job with intelligence and patience, you’ll find it’s quite possible to get a beautiful, long-lasting coat of paint up without bankrupting yourself in the process.