Painting the Internal Plywood Walls - 2023 May

     Before painting I had to sand the walls, just a quick-once over to prepare the surface. We had belt sanders, both one that you plug into 240v and one that we put a Ryobi battery in, but they were too large and aggressive for this purpose. We had the Ryobi battery-powered multi-tool which came with a small triangular sanding head and special size pieces of sandpaper that fit, but that was too small to do entire walls with. So we bought a Ryobi battery-powered "palm sander" which was perfect for the job.

          I made myself a special bespoke rig to catch the dust, by attaching the Ryobi battery-powered hand vacuum through a washing machine drain hose, a piece of aluminium bent to the right shape, and some duct tape. By the way, whilst I do like most of the Ryobi products, I do not recommend this vacuum. It is not worth any money as it has little power and always immediately blocks the filter within about 10 seconds of starting to use it.

          Safety equipment was safety glasses and ear muffs. At least my ears were being kept warm on those frosty mornings!

      When I wasn't using the vacuum to keep the dust under control, I wore a very good dust mask. You don't want to put ANYTHING in your lungs, but especially not the dust from treated wood.

          2023 September - We bought some paint which is the undercoat and the primer, and the topcoat was a colour called Twill, just the most common stuff from Bunnings.

          After giving the walls a wipe down with a damp cloth, I painted all the edges and the joins with a brush.

 I used a special cutting-in brush which was AMAZING and I highly recommend. It has an angled cut across the top of the bristles and this lets you paint exact lines at the edges. If you are careful enough you might not need to stick masking tape and newspaper around the edges.

          Something I noticed in the above photo is the holes cut for the plumbing and the electrical wiring. As Josh was cutting and screwing the plywood walls up, he was measuring where the power points and light switches were going to go, and cutting out the right size holes in the right place, and threading the wires through, ready for when the electrician comes back to connect them. Also the water pipes and the gas pipe had to have nice round holes cut to fit in exactly the right place. He did a great job with these tricky details.

          Also in the top left corner you can see that there is still silver sisalation as that section did not yet have the plywood screwed up yet. I was painting what I could as Josh worked in sections around the house.

          Then I painted the walls with a roller. I started with a full-size 30cm roller but found it was very painful to grip with my hands, as you actually have to push quite hard against the wall to get the paint out of the roller and onto the wall, filling in all the little crevices in the wood. So I changed to a small 10cm roller and found that it was fantastic to use. much easier. Also I added a stick to make it longer, so that I could paint the tops of the walls 

        Another thing I loved about the small roller is its fantastic little roller tray, with a special end to catch any drips. Much easier to clean too, which is the most annoying part of painting!

          But that was only the base coat - two more coats AND cutting-in to go!