7 Mistakes To Avoid While Painting Concrete in Denver Metro, CO
When you have concrete in or outside of your house, you can come to need to paint the concrete — it can be that you have just gotten the concrete installed or you are looking to paint concrete that already is there — you must be careful with it, as errors made can be costly.
People painting concrete might treat concrete like they would any other surface, and some of the rather foolish things they do can be rather disastrous in the painting process.
With that being the case, here are seven mistakes to avoid while painting concrete in Denver Metro, CO.
1. Using The Wrong Kind Of Paint
Paint is paint is paint. Right?
Not at all — and certainly not when you are looking to paint concrete.
If you use the wrong kind of paint — using a paint meant for painting the walls of your home interior rather than a concrete surface, you may find that the paint is quite literally peeling off the concrete surface.
This will happen because a concrete surface is considerably more porous than other surfaces that get painted and, as such, cannot be painted with the same kind of paint that you will use for these other surfaces.
2. Not Cleaning The Surface First
If you’re going to be painting concrete, you have to make sure that you clean it first.
Without cleaning the concrete, you will first be painting on top of what could be dirt, mold, and more — and that’s never a good look for painted concrete.
The second issue with painting a dirty surface is that you’re not going to have a smooth surface upon which you can paint, which will lead to the paint not going on and if you had properly prepared the surface.
3. Leaving Holes And Cracks
You can have the cleanest surface imaginable, but it won’t do you too much good if you have cracks and holes.
This is the case that should be somewhat obvious, but if it is not, you will not want to paint over holes and cracks, and that absolutely will not fill said cracks.
It is better to fill the holes with a proper concrete putty before painting.
4. Not Sanding
Although some people will think about sanding as something that you only have to do when painting wooden surfaces, there is much more to sanding than just this.
Concrete, for example, you will need to use an appropriate sanding pad for sanding the concrete’s surface before your painting it.
As mentioned above, you must have a smooth surface for painting, and part of that comes in the form of sanding the surface before you paint it.
5. Not Wearing Protective Gear
Some would look at concrete painting and think that it’s not that big of a deal and that no protective gear is needed.
This is not at all the case — there are harsh chemicals that are often used in the preparation of a concrete painting job, and you aren’t going to want to go into such a job with your bare hands.
Depending on what you use to paint the concrete, you might need to use a proper face mask and gloves, and eye protection.
6. Not Considering Epoxy Garage Paint
If you really want to make a good show of painting concrete, you should consider using epoxy garage paint to paint your concrete surface.
Epoxy garage paint takes longer to dry, but it will look so much better in the long run.
7. Not Letting It Dry
You’re looking at a lot of time to spend waiting for things to dry — for the primer to dry as well as for paint to dry.
Not allowing these to dry is just a way for you to nearly ensure that the not yet dry coat of paint or primer could well come up on the brush or roller.
Don’t settle for just any painter when you can get the attention to detail and professionalism from Imhoff Fine Residential Painting in Denver Metro, CO. Call us today to speak with one of our professional color consultants.
5 Ways To Save Money On Wallpapering in Denver Metro, CO
Not every interior room of your home needs to be painted — indeed, for some, the idea of having wallpaper instead of paint on the walls is something to consider, and maybe even a bit of a chance to remember one’s youth and living in a home with more wallpaper clad walls than painted walls.
It can sometimes be a bit pricey to apply wallpaper, depending on how you go about it, but if you do it right, you can get the work done even on a somewhat smaller budget.
With that being the case, here are five ways to save money on wallpapering in Denver Metro, CO.
1. Check The Clearance Section
Though one would not traditionally think of the clearance section when one is in the market for buying a thing like wallpaper, many stores sell wallpaper (both in the online sense and the brick and mortar kind) offer clearance wallpaper.
It is worth noting that you aren’t going to have the same selection of wallpaper you can choose when you shop the clearance section. Still, it may well be worth it as it could boost your creativity — sometimes having fewer choices in a creative endeavor can make it a better project overall as we use the limitations to create something new.
2. Online Auction Sites
Another great place that you can find wallpaper at a discount is an online auction site, where you can often find people selling things at deep discounts because they want to get rid of it or, in some cases, do not know its value.
Once again, you really have to have an open mind when it comes to what kind of wallpaper design you will end up with, but that can be part of the fun of wallpapering one of the rooms of your home.
3. Partial Wallpaper
Another option to reduce the cost of wallpapering one of the rooms in your home is only partially to wallpaper the room and to paint the parts of the wall that are not covered with wallpaper.
Though this most likely sounds like a proposition that will cost you more, depending on how you plan your painting and wallpaper work, you can make it work for less money.
4. Samples!
There’s one thing that just about every wallpaper selling organization has: the samples of the product they are selling.
Another thing that these very same organizations do is eventually stop selling the wallpapers… but they don’t always get rid of the samples that they had to go with the wallpaper they had used to help decide if they wanted to buy the wallpaper or not.
If you feel particularly inspired, you can go to one or more stores that sell wallpaper and ask for samples that they no longer have in stock and use them together.
There is quite a bit of creativity involved in doing such a thing as you are basically taking a gamble at finding wallpaper samples that are remotely coordinated, but the price is just right — free!
5. Make An Accent Wall Instead
Though it can be quite exciting to add wallpaper to the entire room that you are trying to update, there is something to be said for just taking one wall that you want to stand out and wallpaper just as an accent wall.
The good thing about doing this is that in doing so, you will use significantly less wallpaper (though there is a certain minimum amount that you will have to spend in the form of buying one roll) and spend a bit less money in wallpapering the interior of your home.
Don’t settle for just any painter when you can get the attention to detail and professionalism from Imhoff Fine Residential Painting in Denver Metro, CO. Call us today to speak with one of our professional color consultants.
5 Color And Design Ideas For Your Remote School Area in Denver Metro, CO
For many of us, the school has gone from a place where the kids go during the week from the morning until the afternoon into… well, selected rooms in our houses, if we are so lucky — and corners of rooms or hastily partitioned segments if we are not.
As time moves on and it becomes more clear that those of us who are doing remote school will be doing so for the foreseeable future, it’s important that we put time and thought into both design and even color for the remote school area.
With that being the case, here are five color and design ideas for your remote school area in Denver Metro, CO.
1. Dividers For Focus
Of course, when your child is doing remote school learning, the ideal is for them to focus as much as possible, which means the space they use for learning should be only for learning, at least during school hours.
If you aren’t able to set aside a dedicated room for remote learning, you may want to partition the room to set up the computer station with some divider, even if it is temporary.
This can be something as simple as curtains that you hang around the study area to help the student with their schoolwork.
2. Bright Colors
When you are setting up your child’s study space, you should think about the colors used in the environment.
It would be as simple for you to let them study in the colors already present in the space. It may have been painted with neutral or even darker colors — not great for your average home student.
It would be far better if you could paint the space with brighter colors — really liven up the place, as it were — and make it easier for them to study and learn at home.
3. Check The Lighting
Another crucial element for your home school environment is for you to have good lighting — this is important not just because they need to be able to see well, but they sometimes need to be seen well.
Specifically, this is the case when your student participates in the kind of remote learning where not only the teacher is seen by the class, but everyone sees the entire class — and that means that the lighting needs to be good.
Ideally, you will want to have enough light so that your child is well illuminated when you look at the screen.
4. Consider The Dining Room
Especially in this time in history, when we see fewer and fewer opportunities for people to have people over for larger dining opportunities, the dining room may be a good place to set up your child for remote learning.
It is usually a sizable room and has fairly good lighting, sometimes even from overhead, which is good for remote learning.
5. Organize, Organize, Organize!
A space that is well organized is better for your home school / remote school student.
Most importantly, your child should be able to find where all of their class materials are at the beginning of every class session. That also means that when they are finished, they should put everything back in a particular class so that it’s easy to find the next day.
There are numerous ways that you can sort your child’s schoolwork, including getting special shelves to store the various things related to the schoolwork.
Don’t settle for just any painter when you can get the attention to detail and professionalism from Imhoff Fine Residential Painting in Denver Metro, CO. Call us today to speak with one of our professional color consultants.
When you are looking to update your garage’s look or functionality, there are many ways you can go about doing it, with some being objectively better and others being just subjectively so.
There are ways that you can update the aesthetic of your garage and other things that you can do that work more on a practical level, helping you sort the things in your garage more easily as it were.
With that being the case, here are five ways to update your garage in Denver Metro, CO.
1. Better Insulation
One way you can update your garage happens to be one of the least interesting and fun ways, so to speak, and possibly one of the most important ones.
When you happen to spend a lot of time in your garage, the time you spend must be comfortable — so you aren’t going to want to be either too cold or too hot, as it were.
To avoid such wild temperature variations in your garage, you should consider adding some good insulation to it — this would be just the sort of thing to keep it temperature appropriate depending on the season.
In any case, it will be a lot easier for you to keep your garage at a comfortable temperature if you have it insulated first.
2. Car Lift
If you spend even a bit of time working on your car, it may be worth investing in a car lift — the kind of thing that can lift your car to the height that you can more easily work on it from underneath without getting on your back.
Of course, this is not the thing for everyone, but some lifts do other things for your vehicles other than allow you to work on them.
For example, there are sorts of car lifts that can help you store two cars in the same space — or one car and another sort of vehicle if that is what interests you.
Alternatively, just lifting your car can make it a bit easier to make your way around the garage.
3. Add Organizing System
There are many ways that you can keep your garage organized, but one of the best ways that you can do it is by adding an organizing system.
Organizing systems can come in different shapes and sizes, but they all have in common that they help keep your bits and pieces more easily sorted.
This can come in the form of drawers attached to the walls or even stacked up in the middle of the garage, perhaps between where the cars might be parked.
4. Improved Exterior Door
The doors to the garage of today are not the same as the garage that you would see in television shows of the 1950s.
For one, even the technology involved in a standard garage door opener has substantially improved in the last number of years, so if you have a garage door opener, it’s entirely possible that you can get one that is better for your garage.
5. Improved Garage Floor
When you spend even a reasonable amount of time in your garage, one thing that becomes abundantly clear is that you must have a good floor.
With a good garage floor, you will spend a lot less time in the process of cleaning up when you spill something, and you can also have more comfort when you are walking about.
Though you don’t necessarily have to make the floor look any different, just improving the floor’s functionality is a step in the right direction.
Don’t settle for just any painter when you can get the attention to detail and professionalism from Imhoff Fine Residential Painting in Denver Metro, CO. Call us today to speak with one of our professional color consultants.
When you’re looking to update your living room’s feel, the theme if you will, or even the essence, one way you can do this is to use a minimalist design.
You can do many things to redesign your living room such that it will fit this aesthetic.
With this in mind, let us look at and consider seven ideas for living room minimalist design and décor in Denver Metro, CO.
1. Mirrors To Make The Space Larger
Even if your living room space is not that large, you can take steps to make it appear to be larger.
For example, you can do one thing to employ the use of mirrors on the wall.
Of course, you won’t necessarily want to use mirrors on opposite walls as you may end up causing a bit of what looks like an infinite corridor of mirrors, and looking in them can even be a bit disorienting.
2. Consider Floating Shelves
There are numerous ways to get shelving in your living area, but many of them are extremely busy and would certainly not fit minimalism’s design aesthetic.
This is the case because if you think about it, minimalism is more about having… well, less — and having the floor to wall bookshelves is the exact opposite of this idea.
On the other hand, when you use floating shelves, you get the benefits of having shelving in your living room while maintaining the minimalist aesthetic.
3. Allow Nature To Inform Your Space
If there’s one thing that will make just about any area designed with minimalism in mind look better, it is nature — as long as it is done minimalistic, of course.
You can get some very lovely potted plants to put around your living room, bearing in mind that you will not get ones that are too big for the small space.
Of course, if you use only a few large plants to decorate your living room, that could also do well as far as a minimalist look.
4. Backless Furniture
Another excellent way to infuse a bit of minimalism into your living room is to make use of backless furniture.
This is because the furniture’s design quality lends itself to being minimalistic, just having enough living room furniture to make it functional without being overwhelming and taking up too much space.
Naturally, you will want to make sure that the furniture is still comfortable even without the back.
5. Stripes And Tall Furniture For A Tall Look
Another way you can push forth a minimalistic look in your living room is to use stripes on your walls and furniture that is taller than it is wide, as it affects the room that gives it a tall look itself.
If you can get your room to look a bit taller, it will improve the room’s overall look.
6. Fewer Colors
One of the principles of minimalism is the idea that less is more — and this applies even when you are looking at what colors you are going to use in paint and decor.
Of course, some would say that one color is all you need and that one color is white, but this is not the only way to go about doing it.
7. Make Each Item Meaningful
The last thing we will discuss in this article about having a minimalist interior is to make each of the items that you choose for your living room meaningful in some manner.
Meaning… that it isn’t as important how many or how few things you have in your living room (though having fewer would be better) so long as each of the items has significance for you.
Don’t settle for just any painter when you can get the attention to detail and professionalism from Imhoff Fine Residential Painting in Denver Metro, CO. Call us today to speak with one of our professional color consultants.
