Did anyone paint walls on their own (withou hiring a professional)? I have few Qs

Did you use a primer then color or the paint that already has primer in it (like Behr's premium plus ultra)
If you did use a primer first how long did you wait to do the color?
also how big was the place and how long did it take you?

TIA

Message edited 8/10/2009 5:59:36 PM.

Re: Did anyone paint walls on their own (withou hiring a professional)? I have few Qs

I'm sure different people will different opinions on this.

My dad, who does all his own painting and will be painting our nursery only believes in priming first and then painting. He refuses to consider buying a paint that already includes a primer.

He waits until the primer is completely dry before moving on to the paint color.

I can't help you with how long it takes. My dad is a perfectionist. We will be starting to prep the walls for paint at the end of the week (filling some holes, sanding them down, changing moulding that has too much paint build-up, etc, etc) and begin priming on Monday. We are doing 2 rooms, each withg more than one color so we'll have to tape stuff too. I expect it to take all week. My dad isn't happy that his grandson-to-be's room will have 3 colors, too much taping with painter's tape

Forgot to add that you need to take into acct the humidity levels. The more humid, the longer it will take the paint to dry. HTH!

Message edited 8/10/2009 6:07:28 PM.

Re: Did anyone paint walls on their own (withou hiring a professional)? I have few Qs

The walls in our house were ALL white. We painted the entire house ourselves but didn't need to use any primer. If you are painting over dark colors i'd use a primer first and let it dry, then paint with the color you want. You can get a tinted primer (tinted to the color you're going to paint the room) then you really probably will only have to do one coat after the tinted primer... we did this in the IL's house a few years ago.

Re: Did anyone paint walls on their own (withou hiring a professional)? I have few Qs

We painted our place on our own.

We primed all the walls before painting them. We also primed the ceilings.

We used a tinted primer that goes on a pale pink and dries white for the ceiling so we could see which spots we missed.

We primed everything in one day, than painted the next.

Painting large walls doesn't take that long. It's the prep (the masking tape along the windows/door frames & moldings) as well as the cutting that eat up your time IMO.

Re: Did anyone paint walls on their own (withou hiring a professional)? I have few Qs

Primer one day, paint the next.

Re: Did anyone paint walls on their own (withou hiring a professional)? I have few Qs

We already had a light color on the wall, so we just painted over it. 1 coat did it.

Re: Did anyone paint walls on their own (withou hiring a professional)? I have few Qs

Why waste money to hire someone - unless you have serious wall issues. Fix any wall imperfections, wash down walls after sanding (not soaking just a lightly damp sponge to get rid of grit), tape (this is the trickiest part to me), then prime. Next day (NEXT) paint color, wait until dry and do second coat if needed.

Sometimes it takes three days but if you do it slow and easy really makes a difference in my book.

Re: Did anyone paint walls on their own (withou hiring a professional)? I have few Qs

We did our entire apt ourselves. We had Home Depot mix in some of the paint color into the primer - it really helped !

A great tip from my dad: to protect your baseboard moldings, tape a newspaper to the moldings so that half of the tape is on the newspaper and the other half creates the line to paint above. The newspaper drapes down and covers the molding and a few inches of floor. This was a LIFESAVER as many times little drips and spills occur only an inch or two from the wall. To clean up you just rip off the tape and throw out all the mess. We didn't have to paint our baseboard moldings since they looked good and were protected from the color - saved soooo much time!

Re: Did anyone paint walls on their own (withou hiring a professional)? I have few Qs

Thought of something else:

Get a putty knife, you will get little globs of paint here or there and you can just use the putty knife to scrape them off. Go over with one more brush/roller stroke of paint and you will be all set.

My grandfather was a professional handyman/painter. These are called "holidays' because they would charge holiday pay (Overtime) to walk around the finished room and clean up these little spots.

Re: Did anyone paint walls on their own (withou hiring a professional)? I have few Qs

THANK YOU !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!