Hi! I am Mark Osbourne. I am the Founder of Manor Works Painting. Manor Works Painting is the largest residential only painting company in the Washington Metro Area and we are celebrating our 10th year in business.

Today, we are talking about how to paint the interior of a bedroom. We have already finished setting up the bedroom with blue painters tape and drop cloths, and now we are ready to move on with the first step of the surface preparation process, specifically something called filling. Filling is where we apply a compound, sometimes a spackle, sometimes a joint compound, in case, we are going to use the product, generically referred to as Easy Sand, but its basically is a product that we use to apply to the walls and the ceilings to fill cracks, holes, gouges, dings, things of that nature to render the surface to a smoother condition than originally existed.

Easy Sand comes in a variety of dry times, and we are going to be using whats called 20-minute dry time to accelerate the process, so that we can move on to the next step of the surface preparation. Once the Easy Sand has been mixed up, what we want to do is survey the surfaces for any defects that might need to be filled.

In this particular case, we have some minor nail holes, where previous things have been hung on the wall and we want to make sure that those areas are filled. Another area that commonly needs to be repaired are seams that have buckled in the drywall. In this case, we have a seam over the closet door and what we are going to do is something called skimming, where we are going to apply the Easy Sand to the left and the right of that seam and by doing this, it allows us to gradually build up a surface, so that seam will become less noticeable. To apply the Easy Sand, you can use what are called drywall knifes. They come in variety of shapes and sizes. In this particular case its helpful to make multiple passes with the Easy Sand in thin layers rather than attempting to correct the defect in one fill swoop.

Its important when applying the Easy Sand to make it as smooth as possible to minimize the amount of the sanding that will have to be done later. However, if there are some ridges and rub spots, those areas can be sanded in the next surface preparation step. In this particular case, the defects that were correcting are relatively minor, so one pass with Easy Sand should be sufficient. However, there are situations, where multiple coats might have to be applied to render a smooth condition. Even when you use an accelerated drying product like the 20-minute Easy Sand, its sometimes necessary to accelerate the dry time. This can be done very simply with a hair drier, in this case, we are using commercial grade hair drier or heat gun to actually accelerate the dry time of the product, so that we can move on the sanding step next.