Okay, first you need to get a 1 gallon ZipLock Plastic bag for every room you are going to paint.
This is where the screws, coverplates, door knobs and anything else, like towel bars and toilet holders are going to rest while you paint.
If it has been a long time between paint jobs or you are a smoker, you are going to want to wash your walls. Assuming that is done, take your screwdriver and remove all of the electrical coverplates and put them in the ziplock bag. Take a piece of tape and cover the outlets, switches, cable plugs, phone, etc.
Remove the doors. Close the door, drive the hinge pins up and out, place them in the bag, Get the door out of the room. This does two important things, You will be able to paint that spot behind the hinge on the jamb, and you will be able to paint the jamb without obstruction.
Take your roll of 2'' painters tape, and tape off the baseboards at the floor or carpet. So your floor looks like this.
Here is the deal with painters tape. Yes it costs more. It's not just the color. Painters tape is sold in a number of times, hours or days. The theory is that the adhesive unsticks itself after a certain time, and does not leave adhesive residue on whatever you taped. I know from experience that it doesn't leave residue, I can't say about the time as I never leave it on that long. It also sticks to carpet real well which regular beige masking tape doesn't. It is worth the money.
I use 3M Scotch Blue, myself. I use 2'' tape as it is wide enough to catch the roller oops if you stop paying attention to what you are doing, or there is something real interesting going on outside.
Here is a photo of a door jamb and the wall with the tape masking off the floor and carpet. I use drop cloths, as I want to get the walls painted and not have to scrape or soak spills out of carpets.
Here is a photo showing the outlet covered with tape and a serious cut in job. Notice that I have brushed the area between the outlet and the floor. This is so when you roll, you will not have runners or skips in your paint job as you roll.
If you are painting with latex, get a 3'' 100% nylon sash and trim brush. (oil base, China Bristle) It is the angled type. You want a 3'' brush so that your cut-in (which is the part where you paint the inside corners , trim and around your outlets, where your roller won't go)
The other reason is that your standard roller is 2'' in diameter, which means the closest you will get to the wall is one inch. When you cut in, we want you to have beautiful walls. The 3'' brush allows you to have a generous safe zone to blend the roller and brush work.
You will be suprised how much that ceiling will jump at your roller, if you make your cut in smaller.
What your mission is, is to have a sufficent amount of paint in the corner and a large enough area to blend the paint you apply with the roller, to get a seamless paintjob. The best way of doing this is after applying the paint with the brush, we feather the paint edge with our brush. Remember to brush into your work as you go, so that you don't have big ugly brush marks on your trim or corners. Since the tips of the brush are on an angle, we want to make our final brush strokes perpendicular to the wall to feather the edge. That looks like this:
So you don't think I am a slave driver, your paint and brush will tell you when it is time to take a break. You can see here that the paint is drying up the brush and the bristles are clumping together leaving voids which will show up on your walls as gaps. Your friends will laugh. You will cry.
Depending on temperature, humidity and your ability, this will take around 2 hours give or take. You will notice that only the bottom half of the brush has been dipped. Don't try to dunk the brush under the delusion that you will get more paint on the wall faster, you won't. You will have a mess.
One of the indispensible tools for cleaning brushes is a brush comb. At the paint stores these are pricey items. Go to the pet store and pick the same item with a different brand name for a whole lot less. This is a Hartz dog comb. Besides after buying Good Paint, a Good Brush, and Painters Tape, you will want to save where you can:)
When you clean your brush, use warm water, a bit of soap and the palm of your hand. Wiggle the brush in the palm of your hand, under the water, until the paint is gone. Use the comb to remove the bits of dried paint that will be sticking to the outside of the brush. Repeat until your brush is clean, as clean as it was when you took it out of the cardboard sleeve it came in.
Don't buy cheap brushes or variety packs. The bristles will fall out, the brush will get gummy and your job will look like crap. If you buy a good brush and take care of it, you will only need to buy one, and can give it to your heirs.
When you are done cutting in, your walls should look like this. No it only looks like you painted half the room. One of the things that I do, your mileage will vary is to cut the outside corners as well. This will help eliminate the paint runs from the roller going over the edge.
Take your time, you can do this and produce a professional job in the privacy of your own home.
