How often do you paint your walls?

[Mandamom]

I don't think we're painting enough but I hate painting the walls. It doesn't help that some rooms need to be painted (the kids' room) more often.

 

How often do you paint?

[Guest inoubliable]

We rent and have been here about 2.5 years. Our landlord is... :glare: The walls going up our stairs and the upstairs landing are just gross. We tried using magic erasers to clean them but it just left these really nasty streaks. We'll be painting as soon as we can afford the paint and the weather is warm enough to leave windows open for the day. Normally, we'd paint every few years anyway. In this case, the landlord let his doofus high school buddy do the "maintenance" here at some point and he painted the walls in a flat white paint.

[Miss Marple]

LOL! My dh paints whenever we get an ice storm and get shut in for a few days. Really...he sends me to the paint store when we see that a storm is coming. We decide which rooms haven't been painted in several years and work on those. The last time we painted the 2 bathrooms and laundry room.

 

Overall, all the rooms in our home have been painted twice and some rooms 3 times (kitchen, FR, entry areas)...the house is 16 years old and there are 4 bedrooms, LR, DR, FR, Kitchen, entry way downstairs, entry way/landing upstairs, 3rd floor play room, 3 bathrooms, laundry room. The kids rooms were painted early because we used cheap paint when we built the house...the kitchen was repainted 5 years ago when we remodeled it. Oh, and we repainted the garage once.

[Miss Marple]

LOL! My dh paints whenever we get an ice storm and get shut in for a few days. Really...he sends me to the paint store when we see that a storm is coming. We decide which rooms haven't been painted in several years and work on those. The last time we painted the 2 bathrooms and laundry room.

 

Overall, all the rooms in our home have been painted twice and some rooms 3 times (kitchen, FR, entry areas)...the house is 16 years old and there are 4 bedrooms, LR, DR, FR, Kitchen, entry way downstairs, entry way/landing upstairs, 3rd floor play room, 3 bathrooms, laundry room. The kids rooms were painted early because we used cheap paint when we built the house...the kitchen was repainted 5 years ago when we remodeled it. Oh, and we repainted the garage once.

[Joshin]

I guess I'm out of the loop, I didn't know walls needed regular painting! We wash our walls twice a year, but paint almost never. We do the old bleach and water wall washing, they come out spotless. I touch up any dings or chips afterwards. We have semi-gloss throughout the house so they usually just wipe clean, even in the kids room. We're repainting the living and dining this year, but that's because I don't like the color and we need to do some minor repairs to the lathe and plaster anyway. Hopefully we'll be able to go at least 10 years (if not more) until we paint again.

[AHASRADA]

Usually, just before we move in :)

 

We have lived in this house (renting) for 5 years. Every previous home (rented and owned) has been for 2.5 years. It never occurred to me to try to paint while living in a space (other than maybe a kitchen, which doesn't have much furniture and tends to get grimy).

 

The only situation where I would contemplate painting in a house we had lived in for less than 10 years would be if the kids needed to switch bedrooms for some reason, and wanted to change the color.

[BrookValley.]

My house was built in the 80s (we moved into it in the late 90s). We had never painted, though we started recently. It is GROSS!! Everything was a basic off-white, which was fine, but nearly 30 years of grime...*shudder*. So far we've done quite a bit. We're working on our bedroom now, which has been slow going. I picked a really dark paint and you can see every flaw and mistake with it. The ceiling is a bit warped in places, which makes the top edge of the paint look wavy. Sigh. So we've done one wall in the bedroom. I'll get it done eventually, and then move on to the master bathroom. After that I think the next project will be all the hallways, and then our living room.

 

So I guess my answer is sorta never. lol.

[Kathryn]

When we want a different color. We painted the whole thing when we bought 8 years ago. Then when we got new flooring a year later, we painted the public areas. A year after that, we let DS pick out a color for his room and painted ours. When pregnant with DS3, we painted his room. Nothing since then.

[Mom-ninja.]

Um, never. Unless I want a specific color in a room.

[Ellie]

We've been in this house for over eight years. We painted almost every room--and it's a big house--within the first six months of moving in, and we haven't painted since then.

 

Of course, we are empty nesters :D but even when there were children living with us, we didn't paint very often at all, and only if there were a major (for us) redecorating going on.

[Julie Smith]

Hopefully sometime soon.

 

We have lived here almost 3 years. The whole house is painted in flat paint.

The WHOLE house.

[Parrothead]

When I was in the position to paint, I painted some room at least once a year. Now I'm in a rental with hideous wallpaper. I'll be so glad to move to the farm this spring.

[Joker]

We painted when we moved in five years ago. I have since repainted both dds rooms because they wanted a different color. I have touched up a few dings in the living room, but don't plan on doing more than that.

[Georgiana Daniels]

We rent and have been here about 2.5 years. Our landlord is... :glare: The walls going up our stairs and the upstairs landing are just gross. We tried using magic erasers to clean them but it just left these really nasty streaks. We'll be painting as soon as we can afford the paint and the weather is warm enough to leave windows open for the day. Normally, we'd paint every few years anyway. In this case, the landlord let his doofus high school buddy do the "maintenance" here at some point and he painted the walls in a flat white paint.

 

That's JUST like our apartment! Flat white paint....

 

.....on every surface....

 

.....including the bathtub.

[In the Rain]

We paint when we move in. We've never lived anywhere more than 4 years, so repainting has never been an issue. :glare: Oh yeah, we touch up paint just before we put the house on the market.

[Guest inoubliable]

 

That's JUST like our apartment! Flat white paint....

 

.....on every surface....

 

.....including the bathtub.

 

 

Yep! It's so incredibly gross in some parts. The story we got was that a couple rented the place just before we did, picked out and paid for all this paint and had the landlord's "maintenance buddy" do the actual painting. Then the husband comes up from GA, sees the place, rages on his wife about renting it in the first place since they already own three houses in GA, and they turn around and say "keep the deposit - we're not moving in". Strangest story I've ever heard. So when we move in, the painting is just being finished up. Hideous, flat yellow in the bathrooms, hideous flat pea-green in the bedrooms, hideous beige/yellow/vomit flat in the living and dining rooms, flat white in the hallway/landing and up the stairs, and I can't even tell you what the paint color in the kitchen was supposed to be. DH thinks that the maintenance guy ran out of paint by that room and just dumped whatever he had left from the bedrooms, living/dining rooms, and bathrooms in together and went to town. It's all pretty grimy and grubby for a smoke-free house with no pets but a guinea pig.

 

Seriously. Who puts flat paint outside of a ceiling??

[Prudent]

I repaint the white trim/door frames and spot paint our white doors yearly. I try to keep them clean, but after a while they need to be repainted. I cannot stand beat up looking trim, it's simply too easy to keep looking new. It's about a 1 or 2 day task for me. I'm a slow painter, but I am always thrilled with the results. I also recaulk as needed at this time as well.

 

As for walls, we use Benjamin Moore semi-gloss everywhere. The finish is incredibly flat looking, and very scrubbable. It's very easy to clean the high traffic areas and keep this paint looking fresh. We've never lived anywhere long enough to get tired of our color choices. But if we did, I would say we'd repaint every 5-6 years.

 

Hubby works in commercial real estate. He sees the impact impeccable maintenance has on property value and a business' overall success, so he puts a high priority on keeping our home maintained. I'm a neat freak who loves everything looking spotless, so we're a good match.

[Mrs Mungo]

*If* we paint them, we do it when we move into a new place. Otherwise, we've never lived anywhere longer than 5 years and it's usually more like 2 or 3 years, so it hasn't really been a need.

[Ellie]

 

That's JUST like our apartment! Flat white paint....

 

.....on every surface....

 

.....including the bathtub.

 

:blink:

 

In the category of "What the heck were they thinking?" this must be at the top of the list...

[prairiewindmomma]

We repaint when the walls need it...which is every 4-5 years. Our kids are hard on walls, especially in stairwells and in their bedrooms. We're at the point where the magic eraser is close to scrubbing on straight wallboard (paint has been rubbed away) in a few rooms. We'll be painting the boys' room, the stairwells, and the library this summer.

[KRG]

We moved here a little over 8 years ago and painted the entry, living room, dining and kitchen. A couple of years later we painted #1's room and 1 bathroom. We've never painted #2's room, our room, the hall or any other part of the house. The rooms we first painted are in desperate need of painting--but I don't like painting. I like the end result though!

[Ewe Mama]

We have lived here for four years. When we moved in, the previous owners had pristine ivory or white (flat) on every wall in the 2600 sf house. Ick. In we move with five children age 6 to 18 months. You can imagine how long that has lasted. The lower level has been repainted twice because it has flooded twice. The upper level is in dire need of it. I hate having company. Our walls have been drawn and scribbled on in marker, pen, pencil, and sharpie. The results are not pretty.

 

I really hate all the prep work. Painting itself isn't so bad, but I hate the rest of it. :thumbdown:

[Arcadia]

My dad would paint my childhood home every 5 years but he touch up every year any yucky spots. My aunt's children would paint her house every 3 years because they like to change the color of the rooms.

 

House paint smell gives me a migraine so I need to be out of the house if anyone is painting. So far hubby and I have not painted any house we lived in. Our homes were painted cream white when we bought from the developers and we are happy with the color. We will probably repaint when we want to sell and the house have already been emptied.

[Lizzie in Ma]

I've been known to redo the kitchen when it looks too greasy, lol. DH was flabbergasted.

[Durriyyah]

Um, as few times as possible. I'm not much of a decorator and magic eraser has taken care of anything we have needed so far. After I lived in an apartment for 5 years though I wanted to get some new paint in there, so maybe then I would have painted if it was my own place.

[hmvaughan4]

We painted the main living areas when we moved in seven years ago. Since then, we've painted bedrooms/bathrooms as we had kids and decorated. I just decided on paint colors and will begin repainting most rooms this weekend.

[Guest]

We're coming up on our tenth year living in this house (and it was new construction then). We are repainting almost everything that hasn't been painted since we moved in. A couple of rooms (mostly bedrooms) have been painted a color since we moved in. I'm also repainting most of the white doors and trim because they are lookin' bad now.

 

Truthfully, I think the house should have been repainted a few years earlier, but there was also drywall repair to be done, so it was delayed. Also, the places we're painting now have difficult aspects - cathedral ceilings and stairwells, for example. Those are SUCH a bear!

 

I keep meaning to post my before and after pics on here so everyone can praise me and build my ego, but I haven't overcome the technical difficulties to posting pics. :tongue_smilie:

 

P.S. I'm also doing other redecorating and updating as well.

[GraciebytheBay]

We have lived here for 9 years, and pretty much every room needs help. (We painted two rooms last year, so they're okay.) I guess in the 10th year, we'll need to re-paint and peel some of the gross wall paper off the kitchen wall, so I would say 10 years is the maximum we should wait in our house. It probably should have been done a couple years ago, though.

[sbgrace]

We lived in our old house 16 years. We painted everything when we moved in. In all those years I just painted particular rooms as needed. I think the bathrooms and hallway had at least two more paintings each. I painted the kids bedrooms once in that time. The dining room and family room got a coat of paint when we moved out and needed it. The other rooms were still fine.

 

I think the durability is very affected by type of paint-the paint quality itself and sheen. I get satin though as I don't like a high gloss.

[texasmama]

I am the painter around here. I paint whenever I simultaneously have the time/energy. This usually happens in spurts, and it is usually very impulsive, like "Not much going on today. Think I will paint the bathroom."

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

Another rental here that is cheap flat white paint EVERYWHERE. No primer, so in the light you can see some of the previous color through it, and it's cheap which means it peels off when I try to wash the walls. :glare: But YEA! We're moving in 6 weeks (we've been here 5 years) to rent a house from my in-laws which means if I want can paint the walls COLORS!

[lilypoo]

I don't do flat paint. :) So I repaint if I have flat paint or want to change a color. :)

[Reya]

Well, if you use a high quality paint, you should not NEED to pain any more often than once every 10 years in high traffice areas and once every 15-20 years in other areas.

 

I paint because I want a different color, probably once every 10 years per room. I don't paint because it's dirty. If it's dirty, I clean it, and because I use nice paint, they are cleanable!

[Reya]

BTW, flat paint has been the trend for about 8 years. It is a GREAT way to get people to pay for more paint every 2 years when the walls look so gross you can't stand it anymore.

 

Eggshell, people! Eggshell on walls! :)

[Anne in CA]

Dh and I really disagree on this. He does not mind dirty walls. I mean, really bad. I can't stand them. Anything that can't be cleaned with a Magic Eraser needs touch up paint in my book, lol.

[Julie Smith]

(ducking)

 

I like flat paint on walls.

 

Why? Oh Why?

[Happy]

If I could manage it, I'd paint seasonally. I love to try new colors on the walls...right now I have the itch to paint the living room a soft, warm, buttery yellow...

[Georgiana Daniels]

 

:blink:

 

In the category of "What the heck were they thinking?" this must be at the top of the list...

 

 

They painted every single surface. EVERY SINGLE ONE. If it wasn't moving, it got painted.

[MrsJewelsRae]

We painted *everything* when we moved in 5 years ago- it hadn't been decorated in probably 20-30 years, and it was all peeling wallpaper that took weeks of steaming, scraping and awesome friends to get it all off. We gave up on the living room and just re- drywalled it because those 6 nasty layers of wallpaper were not going anywhere! Every cupboard was also primed and painted white and all baseboards. We repainted the guest room to turn it into the baby's room not quite 2 years after. At the 5 year mark and I just repainted the master bedroom because I was so tired of the color I picked. We also just repainted the living room, we have a wood furnace as our only heat source (80 yr old farmhouse) and the walls discolor terribly, despite washing. I originally chose really light colors for the living room and kitchen (pale butter yellow for LR and soft green kitchen) and the living room looked icky so it's now a rich almost granny smith apple green and the kitchen is showing the wood smoke grime because it's just too light so I'll likely be repainting it soon too, to a slightly darker color- not sure what tho. I have to touch up the trim at least once a year. Actually the bathtub is so rusted out a coat of paint might help.

[2squared]

Sigh. We need to paint. Our wall look horrid. We painted when we moved in, but dh wanted to use the local hardware store paint. We are a family with a small house filled with five little people with grubby hands. They touch everything, and the paint is barely washable.

 

When my littlest is a little older, like maybe this summer, I'm going to take a stab at repainting the entire house. It's just such a process since the nearest *quality* paint supplier is over an hour away.

[Donna]

Well, have lived in this house for 3 years and only about 1/3 of it has been repainted. We are going room by room. After it's all done, probably not for another 10 years or so which is how often we did it in the other house.

 

We like satin finish paint.

[bzymom]

I will admit it here--I have a painting problem. :blink: I love clean, fresh paint on the walls, and I love to change colors. I paint whenever the mood hits, which apparently is often enough that my friends comment that I am "always painting" (which is not true). Last room I did was the living room, which I decided to paint right before Thanksgiving. Before holidays/events, I am usually painting something. Kitchen is next!

[FeFe]

We rent and have been here about 2.5 years. Our landlord is... :glare: The walls going up our stairs and the upstairs landing are just gross. We tried using magic erasers to clean them but it just left these really nasty streaks. We'll be painting as soon as we can afford the paint and the weather is warm enough to leave windows open for the day. Normally, we'd paint every few years anyway. In this case, the landlord let his doofus high school buddy do the "maintenance" here at some point and he painted the walls in a flat white paint.

 

You may already know this but I'll share in case others don't know.

 

Flat paint can't be wiped, washed or cleaned. The reason it's used so often in rentals is because it's generally a good bit cheaper and it's great for touching up. You can paint a wall in flat then go back in 6 months and touch up and it will be difficult to spot any variation in the wall that you touched up.

 

With most other types of paint you can spot clean or wash (depending on the paint) but touch-ups are usually obvious.

 

I would talk to your landlord about leaving some paint behind so that you can go through and touch-up as needed.

[Coffeemama]

We've been in our home ten years (chose the colors when it was being built) and have repainted every room except the master bedroom and laundry room. The kitchen has been repainted twice and the half bath on the main floor three times (one of the colors barely lasted a year-it was hideous!) My bedroom really needs to be done, but I want to change the color, which will mean new bedding and curtains, hence the putting off...