Standard mid-winter interior call: customer noticed how dingy the off-white trim looked against newly-painted walls and wanted the entire main floor refreshed in crisp white. Friday-Saturday job so the family had Sunday for the smell to clear.
What we did
Seven hours over two days, two-person crew:
- Day 1 morning: light sand on every trim surface, vacuumed, wiped with tack cloth
- Day 1 afternoon: caulked every gap (baseboard-to-floor, frame-to-wall), fresh caulk takes paint better than old
- Day 1 late: first coat of low-VOC water-based enamel, brushed
- Day 2 morning: light sand, second coat
- Day 2 afternoon: removed all painter's tape, touched up wall edges where the bristle had crept
Tip if you're doing a partial repaint
If you're repainting walls in a room, plan to repaint the trim first, before the walls. It's counterintuitive but the trim takes more work and any spatter onto the walls is repainted by the wall coat anyway. Doing trim last means cutting in twice as carefully.
