Needing painting advice.

After having our basement gutted and remodeled we are beginning the process of painting.
I am thinking about using a sprayer any tips or tricks? Floor footage is about 1300 sq. feet with 8 ft. ceilings
1: Drywall , primer or sealer? Any brands you prefer over another?
2: The drywallers will be texturing the ceiling, should this be primed and painted?
I am sure I will have many more questions.

Thanks
Gary

 

I would never put a textured ceiling! Someday that ceiling will get damaged and when you repair it that repair will never look right. Use Benjamin Moore paint.

 

I’m thinking pop corn!

 

We considered a sprayer when we had a few rooms to do. After long deliberation, we settled on a power roller. Not once did we find ourselves wishing for a sprayer - the roller made fast work of our multi-room job, and we've since used it for painting that would have been troublesome with a sprayer.

Just food for thought. Congrats on the remodel!

 

Sprayers are the best and fastest, but can cost you a decent amount of $$ to get something that you won't hate. If you're only going to use it for that that project might want to rent one for the day. Do some youtube research before you start, technique is a lot of the challenge of a sprayer. And prep. Prep work sucks. Sprayers always leave a smooth texture if you don't screw it up.

There's nothing wrong with rolling, we used to do entire OfficeMax's by hand. Get a good extension, decent roller, and a really good cover. We used to use lambs wool covers with a higher nap and you can go for a long time without reloading. Some people don't like the look of a higher nap roll though. Rolling paint (correctly) isn't hard to learn off of youtube but it can be hard on the shoulders and arms. Once you get it down, turn on some tunes and zone out for a few hours a day until it's done.

Bare textured drywall takes a couple of coats before it doesn't look like bare textured drywall anymore. Primer is just cheap(er) paint to fill in the voids before you final coat everything. We've done quick jobs that required us to use regular paint for both coats so that we could get out quicker, just cost a little bit more. It's really your choice. Primer is almost always white, so darker paints or lighter coats may take a couple of runs to get complete coverage. It would behoove you to wipe down any fresh drywall to make sure the paint sticks to drywall, not drywall dust.

"Better" paint is based on the amount of solids in the paint and more expensive isn't always the best. Name brand paint stores are usually a safe bet, and name brand big box stores usually aren't. I'm not partial to any, but Dunn Edwards and Sherwin Williams are usually good.

Please don't popcorn the ceilings.

Just my 2c.

 

Yeah, that must be an "out" thing now...I see textured ceilings of all types being removed on all the remodel shows of late...

 

I was in the same situation a few years back. I ended up going w a power roller to avoid overspray and having to cover everything. The power rollers are cool but they do tend to leak near the handle (at least mine did).

So I will second the power roller and the use of Benjamin Moore paint. I find their paint coats a lot better than the box store brands.

 

Thanks for the tips guys, but what I was really looking for was how to get my wife to do it instead of me!
Pretty sure we will be going with Sherwin Williams brand and at least trying to spray the primer, we will see how that goes.
What is the best way to prep the walls?

Gary

 

Wipe down with TSP?

 

We had what was called a butter finish done on our walls and ceilings for an old timey look. I used one of these one everything. Wagner 9 in. Smart Roller with Ratchet Trigger-0530013 - The Home Depot. Slicker than a greased pig. Cleanup on the thing took longer than it did to use a gallon of paint. Very little if any splatter if you take your time. Not sure if you can see the butter finish in the pic but the roller did fine filling in the cracks and crevices.

 

I swear it takes longer to spray paint than use a roller and touch up.
The actual spraying is fast but masking and covering/tenting everything you don't want sprayed and over-sprayed, prepping the sprayer, then ccleaning the sprayer and cleaning all the masking materials takes forever. Plus you need PPE.
If the drywallers just finished there shouldn't be any waxes, films, oils or crap on the wall beyond joint compound sanding dust (if they even had to sand) which plain warm water and a damp huge sponge should clean up good enough.
I'd only do texturing if you really like it, otherwise it can be a PITA down the road. I kinda like the little bit of texturing you can get from a nappy roller. Who's going to be looking at it ? Please them.

 

I'm not a fan of textured drywall and it can't be repaired. Basement ceilings always end up with water damage.
A good drywaller will clean the walls and ceilings but we normally use an old towel to do a quick wipe down.
Also caulk the inside corners if the drywaller did not already do this.
We roll drywall. For the size of your job its more work to spray.
HD and Lowes have varying quality/cost paints. Basically you get what you pay for.
Some like to use primers and they can be tinted to match your paint color.
After first coat, inspect drywall for dings and poor drywall finishing by holding a bright light to shine across the drywall and you can see the shadow. Mark them with a lead pencil so you can patch. All drywall finishers miss imperfections and dings happen.
Flat paints hide imperfections but don't clean as well. We typically use a satin finish.
Cut in corners before you roll.
When I say we above, I'm referring to my wife. She loves to paint.