Wall painting in Batumi

How we paint walls, step by step

Our wall painting in Batumi starts with a check of the surface. The wall must be skimmed, sanded and dry: we measure moisture with a meter, and skim coating walls for painting is done as a separate stage and checked under a lamp before we open a single tin. Then the work goes like this:

1. We cover the floor, windows, window sills and sockets.
2. We remove the sanding dust with a vacuum cleaner and a dry brush. Dust under paint gives a rough surface, and the coat holds less well on it.
3. We prime the whole wall, not just the patches, otherwise paint on fresh filler soaks in more and leaves dull spots.
4. With a brush we cut in the corners, the junctions with the ceiling, the reveals and the areas around sockets.
5. We roll each wall in full, in sections of about a metre, bringing each new section into the still-wet edge of the previous one. A break in the middle of a wall leaves a band that shows even after the second coat.
6. The second coat goes on after the drying time between coats that the manufacturer gives on the tin. The last pass of the roller runs from top to bottom in one direction.

Roller or sprayer

In an apartment people live in, and on small areas, we paint with a roller. For a smooth wall and matt paint we use a short-pile roller: a long pile leaves a fine stipple that looks like sand in side light.

An airless sprayer pays off on a large empty area: in a white frame apartment before the floors and doors are in, and on high walls. It lays an even coat with no roller marks and works noticeably faster. On the other hand, everything we are not painting has to be fully covered with plastic sheeting: windows, floor, pipes, service outlets. For a single wall, or in a furnished apartment, that much masking isn't worth it.

Painting the ceiling

We paint the ceiling before the walls, because splashes from the ceiling roller fall downwards. The last coat is rolled in the direction of the light from the window, so the roller marks don't cast shadows. For ceilings we use deep matt paint: it hides small unevenness in the slab and the joints between boards better.

A plasterboard ceiling is painted only once the joints and screw heads are filled and the surface has been sanded and primed. If the frame isn't rigid, a joint will crack within a season, and paint won't fix that, so we sign off the frame before painting. How plasterboard ceilings and boxing are built is described separately. If the wall and the ceiling are different colours, we mark the line with masking tape and pull the tape off before the paint has fully dried.

When we strip old paint and when we paint over it

We paint over old paint if it is firmly attached. We wash grease and dust off the wall, take the gloss off with sandpaper, and fill and prime chips and old plug holes. Oil paint and enamel in the kitchens and corridors of resale apartments are harder: water-based paint only holds on them after sanding and a bonding primer, and if the oil paint is already cracking, we remove it.

We also remove a layer that has blistered, crumbles, leaves chalk on your hand or comes off with masking tape. We scrape it off with a scraper after softening it with a stripper, or sand it off with a sander connected to a vacuum, so the dust doesn't spread through the apartment. We don't paint over dark patches under old paint: first we remove the mould and its cause, then prime the wall with an antifungal primer, and only then paint.

Tinting in one batch

Tinted paint from different tins can differ by half a shade, even with the same colour code. The difference comes from different batches of base paint and different trips to the shop, and on the wall it looks like a line across the middle. So we tint the whole quantity for a room at once, with some to spare, and before starting we pour the tins into one container and mix them.

We leave the leftover paint in the apartment for touch-ups, and the tint code and the name of the paint go into the handover file. If you are still deciding whether to paint the bedroom walls or hang wallpaper, have a look at the comparison of paint and wallpaper for an apartment by the sea.

What we look for at handover

We check painted walls in daylight from the window, in the evening with the lights on, and with a lamp held along the wall. Before calling you, the site foreman checks for:

• bands at the joins between sections, where the paint had started to dry;
• filler showing through, and missed spots by corners, sockets and the ceiling;
• differences in shade between areas;
• roller fluff, dust and debris in the coat;
• runs by the ceiling and above the skirting board;
• an uneven line where two colours meet.

A small defect in matt paint can't be fixed as a spot repair: the fresh patch shows from the side. We repaint the whole surface up to the nearest corner.

How much wall painting costs in Batumi

Wall painting in two coats costs from 23 to 36 ₾ per m² of wall. This is labour only: masking, priming, cutting in the corners and both coats. If we did the skimming, the wall comes to painting already primed, and primer appears in the estimate only once. Skim coating for painting is a separate line, and materials, meaning primer, filler and paint, usually come to 16 to 24 ₾ per m². Stripping old paint costs from 15 to 24 ₾ per m², and spray painting from 24 to 30 ₾.

The price goes up with dark and saturated colours that need a third coat, two-colour walls with a clean dividing line, lots of reveals and boxing in a small area, and work from a scaffold tower. Repainting in a similar shade over sound old paint comes out cheaper. The final cost is set after the site measurement and once the estimate is agreed, and we write the price of the stage into the contract.