The result is decided before the paint. Twelve steps to see where.
Times and budgets are indicative, for a confident DIYer, surprises excluded.
Paint is the only visible part of a job that is mostly invisible. A well-painted wall is a wall that has been stripped, filled, skimmed, sanded, dusted off and primed. On an honest job, the painting itself takes up less than a third of the time; everything else goes into making a surface worth painting.
It is also a matter of drying and of light. A taped joint dries before the next pass, filler is sanded dry, a finish needs two coats with a wait between them. And a defect invisible under the ceiling light becomes obvious when the June sun rakes across the wall.
Finally, this is the trade where the body gives out before the motivation. Sanding a flat is counted in hours, arms above your head, in a dust that gets through every protection. Many DIY projects stop right there: the walls are skimmed and the paint waits six months.
Estimated time 0.5 days
Before choosing a colour, identify what you are dealing with: old plaster, plasterboard, rendered brick, wallpaper over wallpaper. Look for cracks, tide marks and salt deposits low down. A damp or cracked wall is a problem, but not a painting problem.
What goes wrong — Painting over a tide mark left by a leak. It comes through both coats within weeks: back to the substrate.
Estimated time 0.5 – 1 days
Take out everything that can come out, group the rest in the middle under a sheet, protect the floors, remove the switches and sockets once the circuits are off. A genuinely empty room is worked twice as fast, and with no brush-work touch-ups.
What goes wrong — Masking with packing tape. It takes the paint off as it comes away, or leaves adhesive that will not clean off.
Estimated time 1.5 – 3 days
Wallpaper with a steam stripper, flaking paint with a scraper, glass-fibre wallcovering torn off and the wall skimmed behind it. You go down to a substrate that is sound and well bonded, not merely clean. It is long, it is wet, and it is the only guarantee that what follows will hold.
What goes wrong — Painting over wallpaper that is still up. The lengths lift along the seams and take the new coat with them.
Estimated time 0.5 – 2 days
A fine, stable crack: scrim tape and filler. A crack that goes right through the wall, widens or always comes back in the same place is a structural matter, not a finishing one. Salts and damp are treated at source — waterproofing, ventilation, rising damp — before any finish coat.
What goes wrong — Filling a live crack. It comes back identically within one winter, straight through new paint.
Estimated time 2 – 4 days
Track at floor and ceiling, studs every 60 cm, insulation, boards screwed at a regular spacing. A partition is set out with a laser on all four faces of the room before the first screw. Plan the noggins for whatever gets fixed later: a television, wall units, a shower rail.
What goes wrong — Forgetting the noggins in the frame. A loaded wall unit rips out of a 13 mm board with a piece of the partition attached.
Estimated time 1.5 – 3 days
Making good an existing ceiling, or a new one in boards on hangers: the hardest work of the trade, arms above your head, and the place where flatness shows most, because the light always rakes across it. Boards go up with two people, or with a board lifter.
What goes wrong — Spacing the hangers wider than the manufacturer allows. The ceiling sags between supports, and the ripple appears the moment you use a satin paint.
Estimated time 2 – 4 days
Three passes: one to bed the tape, one to fill, one to feather out wide — each on the dry one before it, each wider than the last. A good joint cannot be felt with your hand. It is the movement in this trade that takes the most hours to acquire.
What goes wrong — Filling a joint in one thick pass. It cracks along its whole length as it dries: open it up and start again.
Estimated time 2 – 4 days
On an old wall, or after repairs, a skim over everything evens out the substrate: two thin crossed passes across the full surface, otherwise the filled and unfilled areas will drink the paint differently. It is the item people drop to save time, and the one they then see every day.
What goes wrong — Skimming only the filled patches. After painting, the wall shows matt blotches wherever the filler was: permanently.
Estimated time 1.5 – 3 days
Long-reach sander connected to a vacuum, progressive grits, raking light on at all times, mask and goggles. This is the stage where you understand why skimming is priced by the square metre. Use your hand rather than your eye: touch finds what the light hides.
What goes wrong — Sanding without extraction. The dust settles everywhere, comes back onto fresh walls and stays under the paint.
Estimated time 0.5 – 1 days
Vacuum the walls, the ceilings and the floor completely, then one coat of a primer suited to the substrate. It seals the porosity and lets the two coats that follow dry evenly. On new plaster, that coat is not optional.
What goes wrong — Dropping the primer to save a tin. The finish is absorbed unevenly: a third coat to catch up.
Estimated time 3 – 6 days
Ceilings first, walls next, woodwork last. Two coats everywhere, crossed, keeping a wet edge so the joins do not show. Work room by room: a half-painted room is a room to repaint.
What goes wrong — Letting the edge of a band dry over the lunch break. The join leaves a shiny ridge that the second coat does not hide.
Estimated time 0.5 – 1 days
Pull the masking off before the paint is fully dry, refit the sockets and switches, fit the skirtings, walk round with a lamp looking for misses and runs. One day of finishing separates an almost-finished job from a delivered one.
What goes wrong — Pulling the masking tape off once the paint is completely dry. The film tears and takes the paint with it along the edge.
Range excl. VAT — VAT varies with the type of work
Indicative range, not contractually binding.
This estimate is not a quote: the final price is set with you, after a site visit.
If the walls are sound and already smooth, painting an empty flat takes three to six days. If they have to be stripped, boarded, skimmed and sanded — the usual case in older buildings — count on sixteen to thirty-two days. The difference does not come from the paint, but from the preparation.
On a wall that is already smooth, in good condition and already painted, spot filling is enough. On old plaster, after removing a wallcovering or after chasing, a full skim is necessary: without it, the paint reveals the difference in porosity between the filled areas and the rest of the wall.
Technically yes, on paper that is perfectly stuck down, with no open seams, using a suitable primer. In practice the moisture in the paint often lifts the lengths and the texture stays visible. On a job meant to last, the paper comes off.
A primer then two finish coats, everywhere, whatever the tin promises. On a big colour change a third is sometimes needed. Changing product part-way through creates a visible difference in shade.
Boards on a metal frame go up faster, are easier to carry up a staircase, and let you build in insulation and services. Traditional plaster is harder against impact and suits certain repairs in older buildings. For an internal partition, boards are the usual answer.
Thirteen stages, ten trades, and an order you do not get to change.
13 steps · 49 – 102 days
Twelve steps, several of which the standard will not let you sign off yourself.
12 steps · 12 – 23 days
Screed, tiles, wood: what it really takes, step by step.
12 steps · 8 – 15 days
