Refinishing Trim

Last week when I shared a DIY on how to Make-Over An Outlet I mentioned that it's important to seal up your home against outside air seeping in.  It will help keep your home warm in the winter, and cool in the summer. In addition to keeping all your outlet and switch covers in place, it's also important to have all your baseboard trim in place.  Especially on exterior walls.  I hate sanding so I put off working on our trim for awhile, but now it's unbearably cold on our footsies, so this project is past due.  

I started by gathering all the baseboards that go to one room, and sanding every inch of them.  I used small sanding blocks, I'm not sure what grit they are.  I think I had a mixture of low and medium grit blocks.  Since it's not nice enough to be sanding outside I laid a tarp down, and worked over that.  Once I was done sanding I wiped all the trim down with a damp cloth.  Then I let everything dry off.  

Using the drop cloth again (after shaking it out) I used leftover pieces of wood as blocks to keep the trim off of the drop cloth.  Then I painted my first coat of primer on.  

While I let the first coat of primer dry I wrapped the wet paintbrush in a plastic baggie.  Then I placed it in the refrigerator.    This keeps the paint brush from drying out.  Plus you don't have to wash your brush out, and hope that it dries in time to use for the second coat of paint.  Washing paintbrushes out takes forever, and they take even longer to dry.

Well now that my first coat is definitely dry I should get another coat of primer on.  After the primer I will paint a coat or two of the trim color I have.  It's a bright white.  Then I will figure out where all the pieces go!  I'm excited to get everything back in place, but I know I'll also have to buy some more wood before the top can be totally complete.  I'll give another update of how they end up once they are installed.  Happy DIYing, chris!