From Wood to White: How-To Paint Mouldings

If I could sum up my Summer in DIY terms, it was all about painting. From the staircase to my office chair, from the white shelves to the new blue room, I think there was 2 (or maybe even 3) weeks straight that I had a paintbrush in-hand everyday! Honestly, Im kind of sick done with painting for awhile. Anyway, alot of projects got accomplished and one in particular were the oak stained wood mouldings that I painted white. All I can say is WHAT A DIFFERENCE!

The staircase project was what did it and started the process of updating the mouldings. Its something that I w anted to undertake for a long time, but just didnt know where to begin. Once I started painting the stair risers and balusters, I realized that painting the trimwork wasnt too difficult, so I just continued around the room. Even though the staircase was time consuming, the result was completely worth the effort and I knew I would feel the same way once the mouldings were finished.

To start off, I applied painters tape to the wall so only the mouldings (the areas that I wanted to paint) were exposed.

Heres a snapshot when I painted the area around the window in the living room.

* Sidenote: My walls were already painted, but if youre undertaking this project and your walls are NOT painted or you plan on changing the wall color, then paint the mouldings first. Believe Me, Its much easier! So you would reverse the step I just mentioned. Paint your mouldings first and once they are dry, tape the moulding edge (or buy a moulding paint gadget), THEN paint the wall color.

okay, moving on

Once the tape was up, I was ready to paint. Using my favorite Purdy brush, I applied one coat of Kilz Primer (Ive heard good things about gripper primer too, but havent tried it yet). I didnt bother with sanding because even though the mouldings were stained, there was no gloss or sheen to them. They were at the point of needing to be restained (to protect them) or painted (as I did). IF youre undertaking this project and your mouldings have a gloss finish, giving them a light sand is probably a good idea.

Primer for the mouldings is really important. At one window I didnt use it (by accident it was late at night you know the rest) and you could see the orange color of the stain coming through the paint. No matter how many coats of paint I applied, the orange tint always showed. Now with primer, you may still get the orangey color, BUT when you go to apply the paint color, the orange color wont come through because the primer will block it. Primer truly is amazing stuff!

After the one coat of primer, then it was time to paint. I continued with the paint I used for the staircase which was, Snowfall White by Benjamin Moore (thanks BM for providing the paint!).

Heres a snapshot of the first coat of paint.

In most areas, I applied 1 coat of primer + 2 coats of paint, but in some areas I did use 3 coats. It really depended on the finish look after 2 coats.

Once the painting was complete, it was time to remove the tape. Ill forewarn you Dont quickly pull off the tape because youre freshly painted mouldings might get ruined. When the paint was dry (to the touch - it takes about 20-30 days to fully cure), I pulled off the tape and some of the paint came to. To avoid that from happening, I used an X-acto blade to score the corner of where the moulding and wall meet

then removed the tape.

At this point, I noticed that some of the paint bled under the painters tape so annoying, right? Ill tell ya, I tried lots of different ways to avoid this, but nothing worked. I even googled it, and I found nada. If you know a secret way, will you share? Until then, this is what I did that worked best.

After removing the tape, I took the wall paint color and my Purdy angled brush, and slowly dragged it down the wall where the wall and moulding meet. It worked perfectly!

And thats about it Not too difficult, just alittle time consuming. But believe me, the result is SO worth it. Take it room by room thats what Ive done. Honestly, not all my rooms are completely finished, but most are and the result is so satisfying!

Here is the before and after of the living room

Want to see some more?

Do you remember when I updated the door hardware? Check out how fresh it looks with the newly painted white mouldings

And heres one more. Do you remember the DIY built-in coat rack behind my front door? Well here it is now surrounded by freshly painted mouldings

Via: From Wood to White: How-To Paint Mouldings