Our rental business is going through a major transformation this year as we are moving all of our rentals over to a management company and we are trying to sell one of them. For one of our properties, it was left in fairly decent condition, but could stand to have a paint job. We talked to a couple of professional painters but the quotes were crazy high, so we decided, once again, to paint it ourselves.

With the money we saved from not hiring it out, we thought we would go pro in supplies. For example, we got real 3-M blue painter’s tape instead of masking tape that sticks like crazy to windows and instead of getting free paint at the Household Hazardous Waste center (where people can turn in their unused but still good paint and others can pick it up for free), we decided to go ahead and buy some new paint.

Bedroom Before

Because of that, we thought it would be fun to try out some color on the walls. Britton is a pretty standard “white wall” kind of guy, but I convinced him to try a tan color with white trim.  The most time was spent on the prep: cleaning, removing vents and curtains, filling holes, sanding, taping, and the like. Then once we got down to actually painting it went pretty quick. The only bad thing was that because the trim was a different color than the walls, we had to go through and tape them the other way as well. But because we had the better tape, we were able to re-use most of it.

Bedroom After

So after about two days of work cleaning, prepping, painting and hanging a new screen door in the back, the house is pretty much ready to be rented again! We are definitely not professional painters, but I thought it turned out pretty good. The management company listed it just as we were finished painting and we had quite a few people driving by and asking to look at it. So, here’s to hoping it rents out quick.