Painting the Walls

Boy, I feel like this is a big moment, although I know at various stages, I've said, this is a big moment, but I am getting ready to paint the walls here. And visibly, that's gonna be such a change from what's in here now. Now the whole painting scheme, and I mean scheme in the nicest way is going to be, and you'll see all these colors as I go, the walls are gonna get Cashmere Gray, the cabinets, the base cabinet in the galley area is gonna get Aegean Teal, and then the cabinets that I have built, the new cabinets I built are gonna get an ivory color. So, these are all Benjamin Moore colors, and they're in a family together, and that helped me a lot to pick those colors up. But again, as I work through the processes here of painting everything, obviously you're gonna see those colors come alive right here on the cabinet.

Now, campers, it's all about prep. This is a funky wall covering, kinda wallpaper-like, so we need to do a few things. First is gonna be, nails are gonna get taken care of. Next is gonna be some sanding, then it's gonna get washed, then it's gonna get primed, then it's gonna get painted. We don't wanna do all this effort, and then in the end, not have paint that doesn't wanna stick to the walls.

So, getting the preparation right is gonna be really, really important. So let's start at the beginning. Stuff like smoke alarms and anything that's screwed to the wall, or if you're doing your ceiling, anything that's fastened to the ceiling, take that off. Now in this case, this is a piece of trim, and its mission in life is to mask the seam between these panels. When my eyeballs look at this trim, I'm instantly thinking, camper, mobile home, manufactured home, something like that, because it's just the way these things get put together is that instead of bringing panels together, drywall together, and then mudding the seam, they put this little batten over.

If your battens are incomplete, like this one is, and what happened here is there was a valence. So the batten stopped here because this was taken up by hardware, so it wasn't short of the window in the first part of its life. Now it is. So if you wanna stick with these and make it continuous to the window, this stuff is very, very, very similar. You can get this from any home center, and this is called screen mold.

It's 1/4 by 5/8. And what it's really for is just what it sounds like. If you're putting mosquito screen, if you're putting bug screen into a wooden window frame, into a wooden door, this is what traps the screen against the frame. And then you put a nail or a staple through this, and it holds everything in place. It's not quite the same size, so you can't simply just bring it down here and continue.

You would replace this whole piece with a new piece of that stuff, and then get it to fit the window down here. Now remember a second ago, I said that molding's gonna fall. Maybe not, it's balancing over here. I said a second ago that when I look at this, it just screams camper. And part of my vision for this is to get it to look more like a living room, less like a camper.

So any place I can, what I'm gonna do instead is remove this. And any place I can, meaning, maybe you're gonna run into spots in your camper where you have to leave a piece of trim in place, just because a piece of this batten because of where it is on the wall or something that butts into that you wouldn't otherwise be able to mask or something like that. Now, pulling the trim out left tiny, tiny little staples behind. There's one right there. So in addition to the handy-dandy flat bar, a pair of pliers is your friend for this.

There we go. So remember our sequence of events. Putty, sand, wash, prime, paint. So that means we're at the putty step. And what you wanna do is kind of inspect the seam there, and if there are any spots where now that you took that batten off, this has any appearance of being loose, put a nail or a staple in there and we're gonna hold it in place.

Then, I'm using just Plastic Wood for this, home center product. Putty knife. Don't be alarmed. It's pink. It's interesting stuff.

It goes on pink and then it turns to wood color as it dries. And that's what tells you that it's dry. It also just, it's a little easier to see because it's pink. More to do. I'm gonna go over this section of the wall that we're looking at right now, I'm gonna get rid of that carbon monoxide alarm.

I am going to putty wherever I need to putty, and then we'll come back and start talking about that abrasive step, the sanding step that we need to do next. Couple things going here. One, PPE, personal protective equipment. So you wanna make sure hearing protection and a mask while we're sanding inside of this confined space. So I am using a random orbit sander, five inch, 120 grit paper on the sander.

What we're looking to do here is rough up the surface a little bit, and we wanna make sure we just give it some tooth, we give the paint and the primer the opportunity to stick. Here, where I've put wood dough on it, of course, if I've got little piles of wood dough, I wanna knock that down so that it's smooth. But here, where it's really this kind of wallpaper surface, what we're looking to do is not sand that fabric stuff off, we're trying to just really pretty fast move over it, and again, give it some tooth to make sure that the paint products are gonna stick. One of the things I'm paying attention to as I go is making a pass, and then coming down half the diameter of my pad, make another pass, come down, make another pass. Basically there, I'm just trying to make sure that I hit every portion of this so I don't leave something behind, un-sanded.

Take your time when you're doing this and be patient, the better prep job you do, the better paint job you're gonna have. So if you run into cases where you run your finger over this, like right here, there's a little bit of a ridge, I've gotta come back and put a little bit more putty there in order to make sure that I get rid of that ridge. So pay attention to that level of detail. It doesn't hurt to take an extra light and shine it across the wall. This way, a glancing light source, so that now I can do that with the studio lights when I look this way, I can see irregularities because of the angle of my video lights that are coming across here.

So that can be a very helpful thing. Now, on this wall behind me, where you can see that there's no putty on that wall, and the reason for that is that that wall is gonna end up getting D-board. So in cases like that for you, if you're not gonna paint it, we don't need to do this prep. This only has to happen where we're gonna paint the walls. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna sand everything, and then I'm gonna come back and spot check and look for places where I maybe gotta come back with the wood putty again, let that dry, and then it's gonna take another sanding operation only on the putty.

Once I've passed over this, that's done, it doesn't need to be sanded again. So a little bit more of the S-word for me, sanding. Woodworking or camper stuff, not the most pleasant of things to have to do. If you get into spots like close to other items where the random orbit sander's not gonna let you get as close as you need to do, put 120 grit sandpaper on a sanding block and just sand those by hand. That honestly takes such little contact to get this stuff ready that that a little bit of hand sanding isn't bad.

As long as we're running a sander, let's hit on a few things. And I've thought of this while I was running the sander on my last passes here. Random orbit sanders are amazing things. Couple tips. Leave the sander sitting flat on your work, sitting flat on the wall.

When you get to spots, especially where there some wood dough, it can be tempting to rock it like this and try to concentrate pressure on a spot. And that will take material off faster, but it's also gonna leave a divot. We're trying to leave this as flat as possible so it looks good when it goes under paint. Also, if we were horizontal, we were sanding like this, I would tell you it's just the weight of the sander is all we need. You don't have to push down on this.

So similarly here, when you're sanding, don't lean on this thing. You might think, well, I'm gonna really get some weight against this to help it sand faster. What you're gonna do is adversely affect your sanding job, because when you lean on it, that's gonna slow down. It's gonna slow down the movement of this disc, and that's gonna give you more sanding marks. So you gotta emulate here what's the weight of the sander that I would have if I was horizontal?

And that's all the pressure we want here. I'm really not pushing on this hard, just enough to keep it up against the wall. So keep it moving, don't rock it, don't lean on it, that'll give you the best sanding job. At this point, these spots are ready for a little more wood dough. Let that dry, sand some more, and rinse and repeat, I think I keep saying that over and over again, until we get to a point where we can do the washing step.

Like any painting project, a big part of the final result comes from the prep that you do. Remember, our sequence of events here is to scuff sand the walls, and then use putty to fill any bad spots that you have. Before you put primer and paint on the walls, we wanna wash these down. So the first thing is, check the wall, make sure this is where you want it to be. So I'm looking for blemishes, any little shallow spots that I should've got putty into.

Hopefully I'm past that at this point. I double check, triple check this wall. So I know that this one is good to go. Now, before we get too much further, let's talk about the product that we're gonna use for this cleaning step. And again, prep is really, really important to make sure that our end result is good.

What we're gonna do the next step, the cleaning with is something that's called TSP, trisodium phosphate. And I can't say enough, read the directions on this box. There are things that are important, like personal protection. You gotta have gloves on when you use this stuff, the quantities and how you mix it is important. And what we'll do is, we're gonna wash the walls.

This is already mixed up here, then you come back and you rinse the walls before the primer goes on. So part of your, on your sequence of events, keep in mind that when we do this, these walls are gonna be wet and they might need, they're gonna need some drying time before the primer goes on. So just anticipate all of those steps. Once we've got this mixed and ready to go, the next part's easy. Washing is almost too strong a word.

I mean, we just gotta get this wet. And there's a lot of just rinse and repeat gonna happen here. I'm gonna get this whole thing washed, and then, like I said, follow the directions. Next step is to come back, go over it again with just water, and then once that's dried out, it's gonna be exciting, because we're gonna be able to get some primer going on here and that's gonna really start to change the look inside the camper here. So, I said it a couple of times, I'm gonna say it again, follow the directions, read the TSP box and you're gonna see what it is you need to do to make it work the way it's supposed to work and get you ready for the next step, which is gonna be priming.

Why I am, it's only primer, but I am already really liking how this is looking. Covering up the 1997 pattern on this wallpapery crap. Now here's the thing, I've said a bunch of times, sequence of events and procedure here is really, really, really important. So this step of the procedure, I'm not painting, I'm priming. So make sure that you get a good primer for this.

I'm using the Zinzer 1-2-3, and what that's gonna do, on top of our sanding, on top of the work with the trisodium phosphate, it's gonna help ensure a really good bond between the paint and the substrate that we've got going here. And it's just crazy critical to take the time to do this right, so that when you invest the time in painting, you're gonna have a painted surface, it's gonna stick to the wall. So here I am in the prime of my painting, and I think I'm very funny, and I've got some more of this to do, and then it's gonna get crazy cool, because pretty soon, it's gonna be ready to actually put the Cashmere Gray paint on this wall. So I'm gonna say it again, follow directions, follow the sequence, make sure that you do the prep, and everything you need to do to get up to this step. Primer, then paint.

Well, I know I've said a number of times on this project, here's a big moment, and there are a lot of big moments, 'cause this has been a long, ongoing project. But I'm gonna say it again, here's a big moment. Boy, is it neat to see this Cashmere Gray, that's this particular color, going onto the walls, and it just feels like a great step forward, and moving to a point of instead of repairs, this is new work now, this is the kinda thing that really is gonna change the look of the camper. A couple of things here. I like these foam rollers.

You can get 'em at home centers, and you want the ones that say they're for painting cabinets and that kinda stuff. It's a very, I dunno, very like, it's a very dense foam and it's gonna give you a nice surface finish on the wall here. And with the small, relatively small areas that we're working with here, I like this better than the idea of getting a big conventional paint roller to do inside the camper here. The other thing is just in my experience and I'm certainly not a professional painter, but in my experience with painting, listen to the roller and let me see if I can get this to happen here. So I'm getting the roller wet with paint, and when I start, there's really not much sound, 'cause it's rolling along in wet paint.

And then as it starts to get dry, let me get that to happen, there. So when it starts to get that sound, that starts to tell me that it maybe doesn't have enough paint on it, and you gotta go back to the roller pan in order to get some more paint. And what we're trying to do here, it's better to do multiple light coats than to try and get it all done in one coat. That being said, don't wanna paint any more than we have to. So, listen to the roller, and let it tell you when it needs more paint.

I always do the trimming first. I always cut around windows and whatever first, and then come back with the roller and get as close as you can, 'cause even with a really good brush, you're gonna get some brush marks in there from the cutting process. And then when you come back with a roller, that's gonna help level everything out. And more of the same. Got a bunch of walls in this place ready to go, ready for Cashmere Gray.

So I dunno, rolling, rolling, rolling, keep them brushes rolling, or rollers rolling. I dunno.