After three and a half years of living in our townhouse, we needed some updates to the paint in our interior. We had Home Maintenance and Improvement by Eduardo paint the exterior in March. The combination of all of the small earthquakes, the inexpensive flat paint initially used by the developer and the humidity meant that we had a combination of small cracks, peeling paint and marks that cannot be cleaned from the flat paint used.

We decided to focus on the areas that really needed to be painted – the kitchen, dining room and living room area and the master bathroom. The first step in the process was to clear everything out of the room. Also, as we were having the cabinet and drawer fronts in the kitchen repainted, they had to be emptied as well. With the large wall unit that we had added, all of the items on display also had to be removed. The next step was to cover all of the surfaces not to be painted with paper or plastic. This included the floors, the ceiling fans and fixtures and all of the doors as well as removing the refrigerator, stove and dishwasher from the kitchen. Luckily, with a large outdoor walled patio right outside the French doors, there was lots of space to place all of these items. All of the faceplates for the electrical outlets and light switches were removed as well as the switches and the ceiling light fixture covers. Blue tape was put on all of the baseboards.

We chose Sherwin-Williams satin finish paints in the same colors to allow us to clean and maintain them better. To get the best results, the wall unit was sprayed and the cabinet doors and drawers were taken to the shop to be sprayed there and allowed to dry in the right environment. The walls and ceiling were prepared and small cracks were filled and sanded. All of these surfaces were then painted with rollers and touched up with brushes. Eduardo and Sergio asked that we give everything a few days to dry before the furniture, appliances and artwork were re-installed in the townhouse.

The painting team then moved on to the master bathroom. We also had an exhaust fan added in the shower to reduce the steam and humidity, which would reduce the potential problem of peeling paint in the future. All of the surfaces were patched, sanded and painted with the satin finish off-white Sherwin-Williams paint.

The overall process took just under a week (with the weekend in the middle). The team then cleaned the area and reinstalled all of the furniture, appliances and artwork and carefully check for any overspray that needed to be address from spraying the wall unit and kitchen cabinets and island. The results were just what we wanted.