Practical Method – Painting Entire Interior of Home
I am maybe 1 to 1.5 months away from starting to have to put some paint on the walls of our remodeled house.
I gotta think out loud here, feedback recommended! Someone nudge me in the right direction. Help me find the best balance between practicality and end result.
I have been struggling internally on what would be the most practical approach to me applying the paint:
To Roll it or Spray it
I do not have any floors, or furniture to work around whenever I start. The house will just be drywall, a mixture of new drywall and original drywall (which already has paint on it, but will be re-primed and painted over I have to tape up windows). I will have doors hung with casing(primed), windows will only have a lower sill, baseboards will be installed in all the rooms that are getting carpet. I am tempted to hold off installing the baseboards where the vinyl flooring will be going.
For spraying, I know I am going to have to have someone backroll the primer. Its all prep work, taping up windows, and depending on what you paint first…. Trim, walls, then ceiling. And I was going to cover the walls while painting the ceiling so I don’t have to worry about any fall out from the sprayer tacking onto the wall. Obviously spraying would be great IF I could go around spraying one primer everywhere. Painting would be great if I could spray one sheen everywhere. But that is not the case, ceilings will be flat, walls are going to be a sheen above that (egg shell maybe), then satin or semi gloss for trim and doors.
I already purchased a Graco Magnum Sprayer, which if i don’t end up using I can return it. But maybe I can use it to just spray the trim and doors after its alll installed.
For rolling paint, minimal prep work, but I have to do the dreaded cut in. The cut in is more or less the main reason I wanted to steer clear of rolling to begin with. I cant do stilts, so I will have to push a light ladder around.
My other concern is primer, going with the Killz primer, but you all sorts of primer, some for sealing new drywall (which i realize is necessary and needs to be done), then you got some for bathrooms, and then you have just good ole regular killz primer that simply used for surfaces that have already been painted before.
So in that situation I got like 3 or 4 different primers that I will have to use depending on where I am at in the house. Doing that with a sprayer sounds like a pain.
Sincerely,
Dog Chasing His Tail
Replies
A brush and roller will do a fine job and allow you to bite off chewable chunks as you have time. Since sprayed paint needs to be backrolled anyway there are very little time savings, especially if you aren't a pro. Painting is all about prep.
Unless you have some extreme circumstances, like heavy water or smoke damage, you should be able to to use one primer on everything. Kilz2 or Bullseye 123 should be fine on new wood and drywall as well as previously painted surfaces. They will be more expensive than drywall primer, maybe as much as twice as expensive, but if you have multiple things to prime, they will save time, particularly if you want to spray everything.
Im a big fan of spraying. Especially if there is no floor finish. All you have to do is protect windows and trim once you are at the finish level. Once in a while you will find the sprayed fnish to be too smooth and it allows taped seams to show through. (The stipple of a roller hides a lot of sins.) But try spraying first. You can get some amazing production especially on the primer coat which will be the same for trim ceilings and walls. if you do need to roll there is a roller attachment for the airless sprayers but its only worthwhile if you have a lot of rolling to do otherwise traditional roller is better,
If all rooms are the same color you will get even better production as the longest part of your day when spraying is cleaning the machine out at the end of the day.
I recently re-finished two side tables and sprayed them with precatalyzed epoxy with my airless Graco and got furniture qualty factory finish out of them so definitly spray doors and trim!