Interior Painting in San Jose, CA

A crack running diagonally from the corner of a door or window is movement, and it needs to be opened, re-taped and feathered wide instead of caulked. A crack in a straight line along the ceiling or a wall corner is a taped joint that has released, and paper tape bedded in setting compound is the repair, not a bead of caulk that will split again the first dry season. Water stains are the important ones.

A brown ring gets checked with a moisture meter or, at minimum, gets its cause traced, because painting over an active leak is a way of hiding the evidence of a problem that is still getting worse. In a bathroom, paint peeling above the shower is almost always a ventilation problem, and repainting without addressing the fan means the new coat fails the same way the old one did. Protection comes before the first repair, not before the first coat, because sanding drywall compound produces far more dust than painting does.

Floors get runners and rosin paper or heavy drop cloths, furniture is moved to the middle of the room and wrapped, and light fixtures, hardware and switch plates come off rather than being cut around. Supply and return vents get covered so the HVAC system does not distribute sanding dust into every room in the house. Doorways to rooms that are not in the scope get closed off. At the end of each day the work area gets cleaned, because a job site somebody is living in is a different thing from a vacant one.

Repair follows: fastener heads set, seams re-taped, dents and gouges filled, larger damage cut back to sound material and patched with drywall rather than packed with compound. Compound goes on in more than one pass with drying in between, and each pass gets feathered wider than the last, so the transition to the surrounding wall is a gradual slope instead of a visible rectangle. Then the texture gets matched. This is the step that separates a repaint that reads as new from one that reads as repaired: an orange-peel wall needs a spray pass with the nozzle and pressure dialled to the existing pattern, and a knockdown needs the same plus a knife pass timed correctly.

Sanding is done with dust control, and the surface is wiped before anything goes over it. Caulk and filler are not interchangeable, and using them in each other's places causes most of the cracking people see in a repaint. Caulk belongs in the joint where trim meets wall, where two pieces of trim meet, and around door casings: joints between separate materials that move against each other seasonally. It does not belong in a drywall crack, because a flexible bead in the middle of a rigid surface will telegraph and split.

Filler and joint compound belong in the drywall, in nail holes, and in the seams. On trim, nail holes get filled after the first coat as often as before it, so the fill can be seen against a uniform surface. Priming is decided surface by surface. Every patch and every bare area gets spot-primed so it stops absorbing at a different rate from the sound wall around it; skipping this is what produces flashing, where the patched areas read duller than the rest of the wall under raking light even though the color is identical.

Water rings, smoke, nicotine, marker and tannin bleeding out of knots need a stain-blocking primer, and a shellac-based product does that work in one coat where a general-purpose primer takes several attempts and still ghosts. Glossy surfaces get scuff-sanded and given a bonding primer. Whole walls get primed when they have been skim-coated, when the new color is a drastic change from the old, or when the existing coating is failing. Walls with a sound, matte, similar-colored existing coat generally do not need it, and paying to prime them is not thoroughness.

Application is the least mysterious part. Cut in with a brush at ceilings, corners, trim and outlets, then roll the field while the cut-in edge is still wet so the two lay together instead of leaving a visible band. Nap length is chosen for the texture: short for smooth walls, longer for heavy orange peel that a short nap will not reach into. Two finish coats means two, and the second one is not optional just because the first covered acceptably; the film thickness of a full second coat is what gives a wall its washability.

Trim generally goes in a waterborne alkyd enamel, which levels out brush marks better than standard latex and cures harder, which matters on a surface that gets knocked constantly. Dry to the touch and cured are different states, and the practical consequence is that furniture should not be pressed against a new wall, and nothing should be scrubbed, until the film has had time to harden. Ceilings deserve a separate note. Acoustic ceilings sprayed before 1978 can contain asbestos, and painting one is not always straightforward: the texture absorbs heavily, a roller can pull the material off in patches, and disturbing it is a health question rather than a finish question.

Any pre-1978 popcorn ceiling should be tested before it is scraped or aggressively worked, and removal is a job for a certified abatement contractor rather than a painting crew. Homes of that vintage also fall under the federal rule governing lead-safe work practices when paint is disturbed in pre-1978 housing, which is a question to raise with any contractor before sanding starts in an older house.