Introduction: Basement Painting

My girlfriend and I just bought our first house. We decided that it would be a great idea to paint the basement before we moved everything in. It should give it that clean and new feel, even though house was built in the 50's. In the following steps i will share with you my 4 day ordeal and how to paint your basement.

Step 1: Clean and Prep

The first step to any decent paint job is to prep and clean your canvas. I started with a broom and removed all of the cob webs in the floor joists'. I then dismantled these horrible looking curtains. I swept all of the walls to the floor, and then took a shop vac to the piles. I proceeded to the wall to continue the prepping process. I took my steel tooth brush to the walls to remove any loss debris and previous pink paint. I continued scrubbing and then turned my brush to the floors and scrubbed that as well. I finished up by vacuuming any of the left over dust.

Step 2: Continue Prep

In this step I took a water lock cement paint to first seal the walls. It was tough stuff to put on the concrete soaked up everything so I decided to lay on a thicker coat with a thicker nap roller, I went from a 3/8 roller to a 3/4in nap, which is the length of the hair on your roller, the thicker nap the thicker the paint and space that your paint will fill. This was a good decision, and should of started with it first instead of wasting paint, we live and we learn. The paint covered perfectly after my roller change. I wasn't going to prime the floor,but I had more then enough paint to do so so i primed the floors as well. This was not as bad as I had originally thought it was going to be. I took my 6ft roller pole which was probably too big, but it worked out really well and made my life very easy. I didn't have to be hunched over it was kinda like being on a paddle board, and just painting away. It was very relaxing.

Step 3: Top Coat Walls

So to top coat the walls I went to my local hardware store and bought 3 gallons of white concrete paint. I started rolling it out with my 3/4in nap roller, this helped fill in a lot of the very porous spots in the concrete. The paint covered wonderfully and I was able to get away with just one coat on the walls.

Step 4: Top Coat Floor

This was my favorite step, as i watched my basement turn from dirty and undesirable to be in, to a beautiful space my family and I can walk around and store things cleanly. There is no where for the dirt and grim of a basement to hide. Again I took my roller and long roller poll and paddled away at the floor until i cornered myself up the stairs. I let it dry for 24 hours and cam back to see my progress. It definitely needed a second coat, so again I painted away until I was pushed up against the stairs.

Step 5: Cutting the Walls and Floor

In this step, i thought i could get away with just painting the white paint down to the floor and painting the floor paint close enough so i didn't have to go back and cut around the whole basement floor. At this point i was done painting, but it just didn't look right so what i decided to do to finish is off was take my 4in roller and trim out the wall to make it look like a piece of trim along the base of the walls. I was going to be peticular and level off a line all the way around, but again at this point i was done 4 days in and not operating on much sleep. So I rolled out the straightest lines I could. It came out better then I had hoped, and our basement was now painted and finished. All that is left to do is everything else. Thanks for reading.

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