Home office decorating project.

This project involved redecorating a home office room for some of our fantastic clients in Halton, Leeds.

We started off by masking the floors with Q1 pro-board and the walls with 3M masking film and the trusty hand masker. This meant we could get on and spray two coats onto the ceiling and coving, with no cutting-in to do, one coat straight after the other. This can be done with spraying, but not rolling or brushing, saving around 12 hours of drying time verse cutting-in the edges twice and rolling the walls twice.

The varnished woodwork was to be painted white including the back of the door, the skirting boards and the radiator. This involved the usual filling, sanding and prep of the skirting, but the back of the door needed more attention as the family dogs had managed to gouge deep scratches into the back of it. However, once it was filled, sanded, filled a second time and sanded for a second time the scratches were removed but the grain of the wood was still visible. This was a job well worth doing as the fresh painted surface would have made the scratches much more obvious. The dustless sander made this a breeze and kept the dust to a minimum.

The walls were also in need of plenty of attention as they had lots of holes to fill and lumps and bumps that needed sanding down - plus some serious cracks (see images). Again the dustless sander was invaluable for this.

The large cracks were opened up, cleaned out, sealed with Zinsser Peel Stop and then first filled with Toupret Fill-Flex, a flexible filler that helps stop crack reappearing in surfaces that may have movement in them. Once the second fill was done they were sanded and primed in the wall colour ready for painting.

After that we sprayed a coat of adhesion primer onto the varnished wood and radiator, followed by two topcoats. When that was all dry we cut in the wall edges with a brush twice, rolled the walls once, filled any imperfections, sanded and spot primed the filler then rolled the walls a second time, and we were done.

We finished off by removing the masking and floor covering, sweeping up and vacuuming.

• Airless Spray Painting, Brush, Roller, Q1 & 3M Masking Products

• Ceilings - Farrow & Ball Dead Flat in Wimborne White No.239

• Walls - Farrow & Ball Dead Flat in Bone No.15

• Woodwork, Door & Radiator - Caparol Haftprimer in F&B Wimborne White No.239

• Woodwork & Door - Farrow & Ball Estate Eggshell in Wimborne White No.239

• Toupret Fill-Flex, Toupret Wood Repair Filler, Gyproc Easifill 20

The walls were in a significantly worse condition than we had anticipated on this project. When we began sanding the walls to smooth them out ready for painting we noticed a lot more holes and bumps than we had when assessing the job originally. This just meant that more time was spent filling and sanding on this job than would be normal for a room of that size.

Also, when sanding varnish you tend to go through a lot more sanding pads than you would sanding paint as they get caked in the stuff. Luckily this was costed in but it’s always a faff constantly changing pads.

The clients were really happy with the results we managed to achieve on this home office project. It did run slightly over the estimated time, but this happens sometimes and the end result was worth it.

See our instagram @yesdecor_social to view the results for yourself.