Home DIY

IME I've often regretted buying cheap paint but after I said fuck it, never again a few years back, I've never regretted buying expensive paint. Or paint that isn't suspiciously cheap, rather. Good white wall paint will cover well after two coats. Shit paint could mean four coats before it starts looking ok. The money saved really isn't worth it.

Edit: I'm sure there's very expensive paint that's not worth the money as well. I just meant don't buy cheap crappy paint.

Buy some decent, non-shedding brushes for cutting in the edges,
then buy and learn to use a roller.
Start with the smallest / least used room until you have learnt to
equally load up the roller with paint.

Wash down the paper with Sugar Soap, with two buckets.
One has the sugar soap solution,
the other is the rinsing water for the rag/cloth you are using to wash/clean your wall paper.
Change the rinsing water frequently, as soon as neccessary, so you are only ever washing the walls with clean sugar soap solution.

Quality water based paint can be 'let down' with 10-15% water to thin it,
for the first coat,
to reduce the 'grab' of dry wallpaper as the roller makes first impact.

Leyland Super Leytex for me. Really good coverage. Can get away with one coat on bare plaster sometimes.

Oh, while I'm here, fuck Farrow & Ball. Apart from the general twattiness and price, I bought two cans of the same paint there the other week and they were noticeably different colours after stirring. Made me stand around in the shop waiting for samples to dry to compare and said that they "aim to get colour matches within 1%" which is utterly meaningless. Also, their emulsion paint is more like vinyl or acrylic, and didn't adhere properly to my base coat of Leyland emulsion. I used some weak masking tape on one area, and when I carefully removed it, it peeled off a big plastic-like strip of F&B paint. Just get it colour matched in Dulux super-matte and save yourself the grief.