Painting cabinets and cupboards will be easier if you remove all obstructions first, including shelves, drawers, handles, pulls, knobs, and latches. If the hinges on the doors have pins you can remove easily, take off the doors until the cabinet and cupboard interiors and surfaces have been painted.

Painting cabinets and cupboards will be easier if you remove all obstructions first, including shelves, drawers, handles, pulls, knobs, and latches. If the hinges on the doors have pins you can remove easily, take off the doors until the cabinet and cupboard interiors and surfaces have been painted.
©2006 Publications International, Ltd.With cabinets, paint in thissequence, starting inside and workingout. Paint drawers last.The most difficult part of painting cabinets is reaching the barely accessible interior surfaces. Consider shortening the handles on your trim brushes to make things easier. Paint the inside back walls; inside top; side walls; and bottoms, tops, and edges of shelves.
Then paint all the exterior surfaces, working from the top down. If the doors are still in place, swing them open and paint the inside surfaces. Then close them partway and paint the outside. Finally, stand the drawers up on newspapers and paint only their fronts. Do not paint the exterior sides or bottoms of the drawers.

Floors

Once reserved for porches, paint is turning up on wood floors with increasing frequency, particularly in vacation homes. You can do a small floor in just a couple of hours once everything is prepared.

The techniques for painting floors are the same as for painting any other large flat surface. Be sure to remove all traces of wax, and sand the floor lightly to roughen its surface, improving its paint-holding ability. You can use ordinary porch and deck paint, but the color selection may be limited. You can also use a good-quality oilbase enamel. In either case, follow up with two to four coats of clear polyurethane to protect the painted finish.

First, remove all the furniture from the area, and cut in the paint around the baseboards with a brush. Then you can use either a wide wall brush or a medium-pile roller for the rest of the floor. If you use an extension handle on a roller, you will be able to do the job standing up. Paint your way out of the room. On most wood floors, plan on applying at least two coats of paint, then two, three, or four coats of polyurethane. Let each coat dry to absolute hardness before reentering the room, and wear rubber-soled shoes until after the very last coat to avoid marring or scarring the surface.

Painting masonry floors is easier, faster, less expensive, and more common than painting wood floors. Moisture is a major cause of masonry painting problems. Most masonry is porous, and water that comes through it pushes at the paint, causing small particles to come off. In addition, the alkalinity in masonry affects the adhesiveness of some paints and attacks the pigments in others. Paint designed for masonry surfaces can handle rough treatment.

There are a number of latex-base masonry paints that offer the advantages of easy application and easy cleanup. They can be used in damp conditions without adhesion problems. Cement-base paints are frequently used on previously unpainted concrete where very low-pressure moisture is a problem. Epoxy paints are often applied where a hard finish is needed to resist moisture and chemicals. Just make sure the paint you use is compatible with any existing paint and with the type of masonry you’ll be covering. A paint dealer can help you select the appropriate coating.

Before you get down to painting, repair and patch all cracks and holes and allow the patch compounds to cure fully. Then, wearing rubber gloves and goggles, use a 10 percent muriatic acid solution to remove efflorescence, the whitish powder that appears in spots on concrete. Mop up the solution, let the area dry, rinse it thoroughly, and let it dry again. Wash the entire floor with a strong detergent or a concrete degreaser. Then, once the floor is dry and just before painting, vacuum it to get rid of any leftover dirt.

On most masonry floors you can paint with a long-napped roller fitted with an extension handle so you can paint standing up, but you may need a brush for very rough areas. Depending on the surface conditions and the kind of paint you use, you may have to apply a second coat. If so, read the label on the paint can to find out how long you should wait between coats.

Some people like to finish painting a room by adding decorative flourishes. The next section, then, will focus on painting stencils, textures, and stripes.

The first construction step is going to be framing up the walls. To successfully frame your garage you need to decide where all your openings are going to be (windows and doors) and plan for the sheathing on the outside and any interior covering (drywall, plywood) you plan to use. I framed my garage in 24″ on center stud spacing but the same approach applies to 16″ on center construction. Based on my site plan and elevation drawings, there are more openings on the east wall, with the access door and one window. Thus I am going to start there.
The first step to framing up the east wall is to measure the width of the slab/block. As designed mine is right on 20′ within a half inch. Take this measurement and cut AC2 treated 2×4’s to make the bottom or sill plate. Any lumber that contacts masonry must be treated to prevent rot. Keep in mind that building code requires that any cuts in the sill plate be anchored with bolts within 12″ from the cut on both sides of the cut. Place your cuts accordingly or buy a longer piece of wood. If you plan ahead you can have the concrete guys put in some extra anchors for this purpose. With the sill plate cut, lay it on the slab/block and transfer the positions of the anchor bolts onto the wood. Make your marks so that when the sill plate is mounted on the bolts it will be flush with the exterior surface of the slab/block. Then drill holes in the sill plate large enough for the anchor bolts to clear (~3/4″ ) and make sure all the bolts will fit through at once without too much binding. Leave the sill plate on the bolts on the slab/block.
Then measuring from the outer edge, make marks on the top of the sill plate every 24″. If the marks overlay any of the anchor bolts you may need to notch the corresponding stud or cheat the stud to one side or the other. Also mark the opening for the door. Typically, the opening for the door is 1.5-2″ larger than the door itself. So for a 32″ door you need a 33.5-34″ opening.
Next, cut regular non-treated 2×4s to the same total length as the treated sill plate. This span should be made up of 2 pieces or less. This is the first layer of the top plate. Then take the sill plate off the bolts and lay both the sill plate and top plate next to each other and transfer the stud measurement marks to the top plate. Now lay both the sill plate and the top plate on an open flat area such as the slab about 8′ apart. Now get your 8′ studs and start laying them in place at the marks. Before you start nailing, let’s talk about openings.
The width of an opening for a window or door is defined by the distance between the innermost jack studs. The jack stud runs uninterrupted from the header to the sill plate and provides support. Nailed to the outside of the jack studs are king studs that run from top plate to sill plate like normal studs. Generally you want one of the king studs to be on your 16″ or 24″ spacing pattern. Above the header and below the top plate are so-called cripples that are placed on the 16″ or 24″ pattern. At the bottom of the opening (for windows) there is a saddle stud that is toenailed into the jack studs and supported by more cripples that go from the saddle to the sill plate. See the sketchup diagram below to clarify. It is very helpful to have your openings planned out before framing so you can quickly measure and cut the required lumber. The header is often made from a pair of 2×6’s cut to width and nailed together with a spacer in between to make the total header thickness the same as the wall. In the case of 2×4 framing where the wall is about 3.5″ thick the pair of headers will be around 3-3.25″ thick and a spacer can be omitted if you are lazy.
Another thing to note is that your starting wall will be the full width of the slab/block foundation. The subsequent side walls will overlap the ends of the first wall. As you can see in the opening framing sketch below I have added an interior wall stud that allows the creation of an interior corner for screwing/nailing your interior finishing material to the framing. See the corner framing sketch to get a better idea of how this occurs. The sketch is a cross section of the framing at the corners of the walls. When wall#1 and wall#2 come together, the end studs will sit such that there will be no way to attach the interior sheathing to the framing of wall#1. Thus an “interior wall stud” is added. I have no idea what this is called, so take that name with a grain of salt. I suppose I should name is something catchy like “queen stud” or “naughty in the corner stud”. I leave that to the experts.
With your openings and corners planned you can cut the lumber and start nailing through the sill and top plates into the studs using the power nailer or your own elbow grease. You want two nails per connection. There are a couple of types of nailing connection, that I will call end nailing, toe-nailing, and bond nailing. See the sketch below to get an idea of how these are done. The only one that can be tricky is toe-nailing, but you will get the hang of it. For attaching the studs, jack studs, king studs, cripples, etc to the sill and top plate you will need to put two end nails into each stud through the plate as drawn. You will use bond nailing to attach the headers together and to attach the jack to the king studs. You will also end nail the headers to the king studs and the cripples to the saddle. The only place you need to do toe-nailing in most framing is to attach the saddle to the jack studs and to attach upper cripples to the headers. Go to it.

When it comes to putting color in your kitchen, it’s no easy task to balance the timeless tones with the trendy ones. An avocado green appliance might make your kitchen kitsch, but a bland mass of white paint is more boring than classic. So how does one choose a stylish shade with all this color confusion?

Thankfully, the Color Marketing Group, Paint Quality Institute, Pantone Color Institute, Benjamin Moore, Behr and Sherwin Williams have done that work for you. These color experts have announced their color trends for 2010 in palettes that promise to endure long after being en vogue. Their predictions set the tone in color trends for fashionistas, car manufacturers, graphic artists—and kitchen designers. Whether you’re repainting your walls, reupholstering your dining furniture, or picking an appliance in a new hue, now you too can take inspiration from these color trend reports.
Source: www.kitchens.com