Home DIY advise needed

Adam.S

Hey all, thanks for reading. I'm a bit of a DIY amateur and I have a few jobs around the house to do and would appreciate some advise.

I need to paint every room in my house bar bathrooms. This is fine, however I'm broke for the foreseeable future and this may not happen for a while.

I need to sand all window cills in the house as well as window frames and bannister and revarnish them all. - I have my own set of questions regarding this, I've been reading and seem to get the impression people don't feel it necessary to sand back to bare wood before applying varnish, this seems counterintuitive to me though?

I also have a number of curtains with poles and shelves to hang around the house.

The presumed sequence for this is Sand, Varnish, Paint, Furniture.

Due to the clutter around my house I feel like Furniture and Sand/Varnish are viable to do in whatever order prior to painting as long as painting happens last.. If I hang curtain rods and shelves I can also take them down in order to pain in the future.

Does this make sense to those who have done this before? Or would I be opening a can of worms?

Any advice at all appreciated

sky6

Painting is 80% preparation and 20 % application. So first prep two rooms to begin with. Assuming the Ceilings are clean and in good condition I'd paint all the Ceilings over a couple of nights giving them Two Coats of Matt Emulsion with a Roller. ( soak and squeeze out the roller in cold Water before you start. ) This does two things, it gets all the Ceilings finished but also provides a good reflective light surface when you come to paint the Walls. You can then use the same roller to paint the Walls when ready. a good tip also is when finished painting for the night, wrap the roller tightly in a plastic bag and it will be fine when you take it out the next night.
Then paint walls next,leaving Skirtings Doors and Windows until last.
if there is several layers of paint already in place then you might be better stripping it back using Nitromors paint stripper or similar.

Hanging Curtain poles and Curtains should be the last thing to do in the room.

whizbang

Most woodwork shops will use "sanding sealer" on bare wood before any treatment.
its a light clear varnish that drys very hard, and reduces handling marks, etc. but mainly it hardens the surface , so sanding is more effective.
So this is why most don't strip back to bare wood.

If you get emulsion on bare wood, it will never come off. So prep bare wood first.

If you are sanding, it takes months for the dust to settle, so this is why you paint first..!