What gets painted in a typical GTA home
Most jobs start with a single room. A bedroom that has been the same beige since the previous owner. A hallway scuffed by bikes, bags and shoulders. A ceiling carrying a brown ring from a leak that was fixed years ago. I take on bedrooms, living rooms, accent walls, whole floors, closets, stairwells, doors and casings, plus the interior painting nobody volunteers for, like the inside of a closet or the back of a door.
Several small tasks can ride along in the same visit. Two coats on a living room, three doors freshened up and a bathroom ceiling sealed and repainted is one setup and one quote instead of three separate trips.
Preparation decides how the finish looks
Paint changes the colour of a wall. It does not hide dents, ridges, dust or dried caulk smears, and a fresh coat over an unsanded patch makes that patch more obvious rather than less. All of this happens before any finish coat goes on:
- Nail holes and dents filled, then sanded flush by hand
- Failed caulk cut out of trim joints and re-run in paintable acrylic latex
- Kitchen walls and bathroom ceilings washed so paint can bond to them
- Patches spot-primed so they do not flash a duller sheen through the finish
- Water stains and marker sealed with a stain-blocking primer
- Glossy or oil-based trim scuff-sanded and primed so the new coat grips
- Furniture moved and covered, floors protected, switch plates taken off
How a room is actually rolled
Ceilings go first, walls next, trim and doors last, so anything that drips lands on a surface still waiting for its coat. Cutting in is done with an angled sash brush around 50 to 63 mm (2 to 2.5 in) wide, and the roller follows into that wet band before it can dry, which keeps the brush texture and the roller texture from reading as two different finishes. On smooth drywall I roll a short nap, around 10 mm (3/8 in). Plaster, stipple and older textured ceilings need a thicker nap to reach into the low spots.
Bad work announces itself in the same few ways. Picture framing, where a dull halo shows around the edge of every wall because the cut line dried long before the roller arrived. Ridges left by an overloaded roller. Patches flashing under side light from a window. Caulk wiped onto the wall instead of tooled into the joint. Paint on hinges, screws and plates that were masked instead of removed. Good interior painting is that sequence followed in order, with two full coats over primed, sanded prep.
Sheen and colour that hold up
Flat finishes belong on ceilings, because flat hides the small waves every ceiling has. Walls in bedrooms and living rooms do well in matte or eggshell. Kitchens, bathrooms, hallways and anywhere with children get a washable eggshell or a scrubbable matte, since those clean up without polishing a shiny spot into the wall. Trim, doors and railings take satin or semi-gloss, which cures harder and takes a wipe.
Colour behaves differently on a wall than on a chip under store lighting. I ask people to brush sample patches on the actual wall, look at them in the morning and again at night, and remember that a north-facing Toronto room stays cooler and greyer than the same colour in a south-facing one. Going dark over light, or light over a strong dark, means primer plus two coats.
Interior painting in condos and older Toronto homes
Plenty of houses in the older parts of the city have plaster walls and oil-based trim, and both need respect. Hairline cracks in plaster reopen if they are simply filled, so they get taped and compounded. Latex over unprimed oil trim peels away in sheets, so that trim gets a bonding primer first. Where old paint is failing across a large area in a much older home, testing before sanding is the sensible first step, and I keep sanding minimal and clean up as I go.
Condo suites bring their own rules: elevator bookings, corridor protection and neighbours through the wall. Interior painting in an occupied suite calls for low-odour, low-VOC paint, which keeps the place livable while the work happens, and an open window with a fan moves what smell there is out faster. I work Monday to Saturday, so a suite can be finished without you booking time off.
