Getting ready for painting

I want to have painted a few walls and ceilings by the end of this week so I need to mask up the rooms and areas involved. To do so I need to clear them first by removing all of my tools, sundry materials that are laying around and rubbish and then cleaning right through to remove the huge amount of dust that was generated when I was installing the kitchen.

But first I wanted to remove another job from my ‘to-do’ list, namely replacing the clips that hold back the large shutters on the three sets of double doors that have been kicking around on the floor in one of the bedrooms since I removed them several weeks ago. I told the shutter fitters to fit them below the shutters but after several locals told me that this was incorrect and they should be on the edges, I removed them in order to fit them correctly myself.

And I think it was a good move because I don’t think that the fitters would have taken the trouble and made the adjustments that were necessary to make them work properly that I did. Fitting the clips for the right-hand shutters was very straightforward. It was just a matter of taking the measurements, drilling the walls in the right places and screwing them in.

But it was not so for the left-hand shutters. Firstly there’s a vertical metal locking bar that extends for the full height of each of the doors that interferes with the operation of the clips and secondly there’s a weather-board on the edge of each door to close the gap between the left and right-hand shutters when closed which makes the edge of the left-hand shutter twice as thick as that of the right-hand one.

So the gap between the piece of metal that flips over to secure the shutter and the wall had to be carefully adjusted and it also had to be beaten flat and oriented to pass behind the vertical locking bar. This took time and effort that I don’t think would have been forthcoming from the original fitters.

Here’s the final result which I’m now very happy with.

Then it was on to clearing the house of tools, rubbish and sundry materials. The first thing that I decided to do was fit all of the interior doors that have been stored on their edges taking up space in bedroom two. This will actually assist when I come to masking rooms up as it’s easier to mask up a doorway with a closed door using plastic film than it is an open doorway as with the latter, the movement of air constantly disrupts the film when you least want it to move. Here’s the first view of the kitchen door.

All of the doors are now in place with their handles temporarily fitted so they can be opened and closed. Surprisingly, even though each door was replaced in the frame from which it came, several were binding and one, the bathroom door, wouldn’t close at all. I’m hoping that this is because the doors and the frames have been kept in different conditions of temperature and humidity in different parts of the house and that matters might rectify themselves if left alone. If not, too bad, I’ll have to make a few adjustments, which won’t be the end of the world.

To finish off I swept right through the whole house and removed as much of the dust as I could. Before I mask up, let alone start painting, I’ll have to do a more thorough job as when I painted the kitchen I found that dust on surfaces prevented the masking tape from sticking allowing some small blow-pasts of paint. That’s for tomorrow though 😉