Painting - Painting over textured wall & other things - HELP

Hi, I am a first-time painter. I want to start with something low-risk like the bathroom before I move to bigger things. My questions:

1. If I put regular paint over a textured wall, will the effect be lost? What can I do to retain the effect but just get a coat of color over it?

2. Its a one-year old house, so everything is pretty clean. Do I have to do anything more than clean the wall with some soap, to prepare it?

Thanks so much for your help!

-Dvei

what's the texture on the walls? just an orange peel or more of a knock-down? even if it's just the slightest orange peel, one paint job will not cover up the texture. you'll still be able to see it just fine.

if the walls are only 1 year old, you probably don't even have to wipe them down before painting (unless they're covered with a nice layer of hairspray, like mine!) just pick a good quality paint & paint away!

Its true that some kitchen and baths will be clean enough to spot clean and paint but it's a good rule of thumb to clean these rooms with TSP first as they accumulate soap scum, hair spray, frying oils, smoke, etc. I use a sponge mop to apply and rinse it, let dry or towel it down and paint it with semigloss latex (best),or satin (2nd best), flat is not recommended. It would take dozens of paint jobs to diminish the texture effect unless you tried to on purpose.

Unless the walls are dirty, you should be able to paint over them without any problems. The texture that is there, will always be there... paint is a color covering and not a filler!!

Thanks, all ! I really appreciate the advice!
~Dvei

I hate to nitpick, but there is always some oil around the light switch and on the door frame around the knob from peoples hands. It's really silly not to at least hit these areas with TSP.

My wife hired a "professional" painter to paint an earlier house of ours and less than one year later the paint started peeling off the door frame around the knob area. Obviously he did not bother to clean at all.

As far as texture dissapearing it's not generally a problem unless you paint a room 3 times with 2 coats each as I have done to get the color right (I could swear that the room was getting smaller!). After you brush the corners of the walls you then go to the roller. Rollers can get to within 1/2" or so of the wall in corners which will smooth out any brush marks (in large rooms you may want to have someone follow the brusher person with the roller person so the brushed paint doesn't dry too much).

The only problem with this is that in most houses the drywall is not straight in the corners and tends to angle away fron the rest of the wall the preventing you from getting a full size roller in contact with the wall near the corner. So sometimes I keep one of the 3" roller handy which can be angled into the corner to spread out the brush marks and prevent the dissapearance of the orange peel texture. I sometimes use this on the wall near the ceiling also.

I usually tape the baseboard so I generally don't use a brush here, just the roller.

This is for anal people only :). In bathrooms I use semi gloss or pearl finishes usually in fairly bright colors which show brushmarks much more than flat, white finishes.

I'm not much of a painter myself but I think bathrooms are harder than other rooms because there are so many nooks/crannies/corners/etc. Plus you're using glossier paint which shows mistakes more. IMO it's easier to start with a big flat wall... :o)