6 Tips Everybody Needs to Obtain a Professional Finish to Their DIY Kitchen Decorating

As with most things in life, when decorating a kitchen, preparation is the key to a professional finish. Without the right preparation, you will find that your kitchen is a mess with wallpaper falling off the walls and paint where you don’t want it to be. To make sure that you achieve at least a semblance of a professional job, here are a few tips on how to prepare your kitchen for the finish it deserves.

Planning

Make sure that you have everything you need before you start; not having the right tools and materials is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Having to buy things half way through a job is not only a nuisance; it could mean have to do it all again. Make a list of everything you will need, including the tools you will use. Measure surfaces to make sure you have enough materials, and buy the right materials for the job. Always add at least 10% to things like paint quantities and wallpapers.

Cover Surfaces

Make sure that you are prepared for accidents like spillages and drips. Have plenty of dust sheets that you can lie on the floor, cover any items of furniture that you can’t remove, and fix the covers in place. Unless you have a very steady hand or are an expert at cutting in, you will need to mask off the edges of things like window frames and cupboard sides. Wiping oil based paint from your beautiful mahogany units is going to be something you want to avoid. Basically, if you are not decorating it, you want it covered.

Remove Kitchen Grease

Whether painting or papering, your new finish needs to bond with the surface it is being applied to, and this is where kitchens can become a nightmare. Grease is particularly difficult to remove by hand, especially along the edges of worktops and ovens, so you may want a little help here. The ideal tool is a steam cleaner, and the ones you will find on sites like www.karcher.co.uk are ideal for the job. Quick, easy and efficient, they will handle all the surfaces you need to tackle, and allow you to be confident about applying the new finish. The days of scrubbing walls with sugar soap are, thankfully, well behind us.

Flaky Walls

Any paint that is not firmly fixed to a wall will need to be removed with a scraper, and you will need to go back until you meet paint with a good bond. The edges will then need to be flatted back with a suitable abrasive paper to ensure no ridges show through your new finish. Applying paint over flaky paint will simply mean it falling off, making your kitchen look terrible.

Remove the Shine

Not only will paint not bond to shiny gloss paint, if you do not rub down the surface with a medium to fine grit paper, you risk any imperfections in the surface being magnified by the new finish. Anything that you rub down through the paint will need a coat of primer applied, so make sure you have that on your planning list. Once you have applied a primer to any surface, remember to rub that down too.

Apply Filler

No Decorator would be seen without his filling knife; and neither should you. There are far too many holes and scratches in most kitchens to be ignored, and if you do, you can be sure they will become highly visible after redecorating. Walk around each surface and wall slowly, and fill any rough and uneven surface you see, allow it to dry, rub it back with a fine abrasive paper, and apply some primer. If you don’t do this, the job will look very amateur after it’s finished.

No professional would start decorating without going through these preparation steps; and if you want a professional looking job, neither should you.

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