A peel and stick tile sheet is a great way to renovate your kitchen or bathroom. Unlike most DIY projects these take very little time to complete. Stick-on-tile kitchen projects often take just an hour or two. And this can be enough to change the look of the room.
We might like to add to the tile project and change a few other factors in the kitchen. A little repainting is one good option. Obviously we choose paint that will look good with the new tiles.
Painting can recolour kitchen surfaces like walls as well as cupboard doors. The techniques for all these surfaces are similar, but things like cupboard doors can be detached and painted outside. Painting items outside can be more convenient.
- Clean any surface that needs to be painted with sugar soap. This removes grease and anything that might ruin the paint. This is an essential step.
- Check for any dents or deep scratches in the surface to be painted. Fill these with plaster, putty or builder’s bog and sand flat.
- If there are light scratches (less than 1mm deep) these can be filled with primer filler. This is spray paint that expands to fill in minor gaps.
- Surfaces can be painted with a brush or roller. Rollers are preferable for large areas; they are fairly quick and given a neat result with only moderate skill. Brushes are better for small areas, and essential for corners.
- Use drop cloths or plastic sheeting to protect any surfaces of the room that are not to be painted.
- Use a brush to paint any small areas and all the corners of the room. Use even strokes and only paint small sections at a time.
- Wash brushes as soon as you are finished. Then wait for the paint to dry.
- Use a roller to paint larger flat surfaces. Standard rollers are 30 cm wide, but a kitchen might be better painted with a 15 or 20 cm roller.
- Rollers with a thin covering (nap) will give a smoother paint finish, but for matt or eggshell paint it makes no difference.
- Use the roller to apply paint in small sections. Use even strokes. Fill in the spaces already painted with the brush.
- Wash rollers after use. Some hardware stores have disposable rollers, or disposable roller covers, for a few dollars that can only be used once.
We recommend using paint that can be washed out with water. Other paints produce strong and harmful fumes, and are far more difficult to clean.
