Priming And Painting New Drywall With A Brush & Roller

Hey out there again, and thanks for stopping in and checking out our priming and painting new drywall blog post here on our cheap Calgary painters internet blog website. If you just happen to be thinking about priming and painting new drywall in your home or office with a brush and roller, or are considering calling in a painting professional to complete priming and painting new drywall services for you, this blog post is just for you.

So, you know what's even more fun than watching paint dry so you can get on with the second, third, or forth coats of paint? Watching brand new paint with chunks in it strain into a paint strainer. So yeah today's blog post is going to start off with a couple words about primer, paint, stain, etc. Always use brand new paint and supplies from the paint store or the hardware store when you paint. And always be sure you strain your paint products after a good shaking.  

Here is a quick run down on how some pro painters like to prime drywall. Now first off, what kind of primer and paint are we using. So today to start with for the primer, we have a Sherwin-Williams PVA drywall primer and sealer. We will talk about the paint we will use later. For now let's review the primer that has worked for us plenty of times and should work for you too. 

Now this Sherwin Williams PVA primer is not necessarily my favorite stuff to use. Personally we like multi-purpose sealers like stain blocking sealers. The stuff that you can smell. A whole lot of ammonia in it like Bins123 water-based ones, or zinzer oil based stain killer ones. Of course we like those really strong primer sealers that get the job done on just about any surface a painter will come across..

Whereas this one is what is it saying Oh it says PVA drywall primer and sealer. But there's just a different level of like grip, and bite that the other ones have, and I think also they're better at blocking out moisture and stuff. Anyways though this is what we have to work with here today, PVA drywall primer and sealer. 

It's pretty clean in here after we dusted everything off the new board. I've already given the place a really good vacuum, like the floor, and all the perimeter, and once I'm done that, I like to vacuum the openings in the walls just to make sure that there's not like big crumbly chunks of anything at all that are going to get rolled into my paint or make its way back into the paint can when I start brushing and rolling the walls in.

Next I like to take a beat up old paintbrush, and I like to get in all the corners, and get any extra dust out that I couldn't get while vacuuming. So next, I go over all the inside corners, especially making sure to get any little clumps of dust out. It's the corners that I actually worry about, so a lot of people worry about the whole wall. I don't worry about the whole wall. It's just actual clumps of dust in the corner that I'm concerned about cuz those will come up and get in your finish and into your roller and back in to the paint tray, and just make a mess.

Other painters say that it stops the paint from actually sticking, but as for the stuff the small amount on the actual wall, I don't worry about that, I find that that just gets mixed in with the paint and doesn't cause any problems especially with a good amount of back rolling so that's all I really do for prep. 

All right next rollers so as for what kind of rollers I personally like to use I like a good old-fashioned roller. Microfibers are probably the best sleeve you can use. I've had good luck and bad luck with microfibers. If you get a good one they hold a ton of paint they go really far they leave a really nice flat finish with most paints. But if you get a bad one they can leave some really nasty textures and they keep sliding off the roller, and that's been my experience. 

So if in doubt because of that just stick to the regular old you know lint-free regular rollers. In terms of size I'm pretty specific about this actually. So for priming drywall especially fresh mud I like to actually put some texture on there, so I'm using a half inch nap which is like that I think a 15 in metric. I'll often even use a 3/4 or a 19 mil for priming only. 

I will use that for priming fresh mud and fresh board because it adds a little more texture to it. You then go and sand that down when it's dry and then you can go down and size on your nap like sometimes I'll use maybe 10 for my finish coats after using a thicker one for my first coat because like I said it adds some texture. Sand it down a little bit then you put two more coats of paint over top of that and it ends up looking really nice. 

And your patches blend really well so that's super important to me. Like I said I don't use a 10 mil roller on my prime coat it just doesn't leave enough texture and it doesn't hold enough paint or primer even if it's a good microfiber sleeve. So here half inch or 15 mil you know nothing too much to say about the roller cage except I like to buy good quality ones. I can't stand those ones that are really flimsy here and you push it against the wall and you can feel the whole thing bend. 

So I find you know spending like the extra five bucks on a good roller cage makes a big difference in your painting and as for handles I generally run around with a two foot extension handle that's good enough for most things I do. That's the old typical two foot to four foot extension poles most pro painters will roll with 90% of the time. 

You know of course use a bigger one if you need a bigger one but for what we're doing today I mean I can reach the ceilings with my hands so not a big deal anyways time to get this thing saturated before slamming it onto the wall. It always takes like rolling out three or four walls to really get your sleeve wet with primer or wet with paint. Finally managed to get enough paint in there but then the thing actually fell in here so half a gallon is going to be enough for me today. 

This is definitely enough for priming these walls and now it's nice and empty not full of crumbs is what I'm trying to say. Always be sure you strain your paint. Pro painters always strain the paint to avoid getting junk on the finished product. I always want to get your roller nice and saturated first spend a little time doing this I mean it really doesn't start to get full until you start doing your first few pushes on the wall but you may as well take a little time to make sure that it has a good start. 

So that should be good enough for the first push so I always start with rolling first now fresh drywall is really absorbent, very porous it really sucks it, really sucks the moisture out of the paint quickly, so you have to move fast when you do this. Most pro painters can prime out 4 full walls in most rooms in just minutes. Now the reason I like to start with rolling first is because it's so much easier to just roll first. 

And then cut in the little like one inch or half inch that you weren't able to get into the corner whereas when you try and start by brushing what you'll notice is there's so much drag in your way. Your brush will slide easier on the half primed rolled in drywall close to the corners. It will be a more difficult prime job to wipe in the primer first. Not to mention most people leave a 3 to 4 plus inch landing pad of primer or paint that completely wastes time and money because the finish rolling rolls in half an inch from the corners on the finish coat.

Also more likely to get it drying out, and getting hard edges, and it just generally doesn't look as nice. So when priming fresh drywall I always start by rolling first, and you can spread your paint out a little bit however you need to back rolling is always the most important part here. So just getting in there trying not to get too much crusty from that cut out the routered edge. The pros would be spray painting the primer while another painter is a few feet beside him backrolling the primer or paint in for mass production priming and painting.

I'm going to call that back rolled well enough. So what back rolling is is going back over the whole thing and equalizing the paid spread and finish texture. Need a little bit of paint right here down to here rolling into my old work a little bit we'll get some close-ups in a bit here and now that my roller isn't super saturated and I put that paint right here a bit ago. 

I'm now going to just gently equalize it all okay there's our first awkward bit done and there's still crusties in this paint I don't know how that's even possible could have been from the edge of this cut okay yeah you want to move quick what you don't want is to leave any edge for a very long time like I've got this edge right here that all the paint is or all the moisture is getting sucked out of this paint. 

And I got to get back to it real quick these awkward spots can be kind of annoying because they take up a fair bit of time, and if you don't get back to your edge fast enough then it gets hard and you get a line, you'll have this obvious line in your work. So some people like to do double use and stuff when they put their paint on it first I'm not one of those people or painters. 

And I especially don't do it when priming fresh drywall because I don't like to leave anything not rolled out for very long. So I find that when I'm doing fresh drywall especially this roller isn't fully saturated yet I don't usually get much further than one good roller line at a time. You know I can get like one and a half or two rolls but generally what starts to happen is at that point I'm not leaving enough texture or enough paint on the wall. 

Always use enough paint. But we should be able to start moving a little faster soon here I get more out in the open, and once this gets more saturated. So that's another good argument for using a 3/4 inch nap as you can go further between having to load up primer or paint in the tray again. Aim for half a sheet to a full sheet between loading the roller again. See I'm getting about one and a half rolls and I back roll a little just to make sure I'm not leaving any lines. 

If you're new to painting it can really help to have some glancing light going down the wall so you can see if you're leaving big roller lines or little awkward spots. Thinner primer and paint really help with lines and dirty tools are usually the biggest reason you get most lines. Okay so there is a way to paint too right like there's a way to leave the pressure and let the roller do the work. Nice and easy rolling don't try to roll your roller dry. 

I mean we've done so much drywall blog posts where we talk about how to shift the pressure on your blade so that you're leaving lift offs instead of harsh to edges and with a roller it's the same thing we'll get into that in a second here just going to finish this and we'll do it somewhere we can get a little more close up and get some glancing light on it. 

That's good that's looking good okay I'm hoping the lighting and space is good enough to try and explain back rolling here so I got my roller nice and saturated and we're just going to push it as far as it'll go so because this is a shorter stretch that was easily able to get a couple there and I'm actually even just going to load up and do this part too. 

I'm going to stay about 3/4 of an inch away from this thing as close as I can comfortably roll and now I'm back rolling because hopefully you can see that this paint is just all over the place, it's super thick here, super thin here, super thick here, so this is what back rolling is. And remember try and go up and even amount every time you go up, but we're going backwards, and so right now the pressure is on this part of the roller, but it's not leaving line on the right hand side of the roller every time. 

And I'm pretty fussy here so we're going to get right up to this corner putting a fair bit of pressure to make sure there's even coverage but not leaving line, and now I'm actually even going to really quickly just go back over here. And I'm making sure the top get that kind of even line. A little bit of fluff from the new roller. That's looking good right even texture, let's take a look at it. We got a couple spots here that didn't fill in with mud properly but I can live with that painter will fix it. 

If we take a good look we can see that top edge is pretty even it's going to be an easy cut in once that dries got one little thing going on here might be a little paint drip that's why we sand the walls after the first coat knocks down stuff like that. So you can move quickly and not have to worry about it there's the couple of deficiencies that need to filled. Other probably be behind like a tile backsplash or something but getting up close let's take a look at the texture. 

I'll try and move really slow you can see the texture is very even here so I'm pretty happy with that three coats of texture like that will help the drywall look more like the old walls again now when I say more like the old walls obviously I don't mean that I want my nice new walls to look like crappy old walls. 

What I mean is that there's an even paint texture is like a nice old wall with lots of coats of paint on it it's got that really consistent texture you can't see where the mud is you can't see what the difference between the paper and the mud is so that's what we're going for by trying to add a little bit of texture at the painting stage and back roll. 

So there's not much more to say at this point, I think I just going to roll these walls out and then we'll get back into it at the cutting end stage so you guys can see how that works, and not like any of this is anything new there's a million and one videos on painting on YouTube, but you know you've been watching all my methods for what I like to do exactly how I like to do it when it comes to painting.

Well had a nice coffee break, paints dry enough to cut in the corners, and it's time to do that while the paint is still wet enough on the brush to do so. Now in terms of what kind of brush I like to use I'm a pretty straightforward guy here two and a half inch angle brush nothing fancy medium stiffness you know, under $5 for a brand new one at the local pro paint store but apparently triple the price for the same brush anywhere else except at the local pro paint store.

We just we just want to get some paint in these corners to start. I always start at the tops or at the top of the walls and cut in the top part of the walls first. This is the industry standard. Okay now that it's all dry we can put the pedal to the metal and just paint it up. As you can see you can feather the edge real nicely because you're going on to the already painted surface. 

So it really has such a benefit to roll first very easy to feather that edge, yep feathering the edges important and painting too. Always do both sides at the same time, that way I'm not going into half dry paint in the corner when I come back to do the other side, they're both wet, so it's nice and easy. They're just trying to go as far as I can go. 

And your first your first time hitting the three-way. Oh no like that what I'm talking about here your first time in the three-way corner right here, is really hard to get like totally full perfect coverage, so don't worry about it too much. You know there's going to be a little bit of brush marks in lines right in that corner because it's kind of hard to not pull a bit of it out sometimes. So just know that when you come back to do your coats on the ceiling and walls you're going to be able to make that look better so don't get too fussed about it. 

You know when you're at the priming stage you got to remember there's some wiggle room got a couple more coats a couple more opportunities to make it look better. I'll bust too much. It's kind of like fussing too much about how it looks at the taping stage. The taping stage of drywall instead of worrying about like is my tape stuck to the wall, and not going to come off. That's what you really need to worry about when you're taping. 

And probably the reason that I am no longer talking about priming drywall is because there's actually nothing more to say. So why don't I get this finish and then we'll take a quick look at how it all looks. You can see what my freshly primed work looks like. And this was on the lope here this is like my b+ work this is not my A+ work. You know that's all it called for anyways, let's get to that in a bit. 

All right let's take a look at the work you guys so we got the tearaway bead pulled off and looking good. You may have seen in a past blog post on our site and the paint still a little bit wetter in the corner as you can see we're looking pretty good. You know my b+ work you know little deficiency there that's going to be behind cabinets. That's what makes it my b+ work his little things like. 

Bhat but generally I'm super happy with how it turned out nice smooth walls and you can see the difference so there's the paper, there's the mud, it's a little bit smoother, but a couple more coats should be perfect anyways. I'm pretty happy with how this place is looking. The old ring light that ring light has such like a blue white light and now that this place is all a sort of grayish blueish white yeah that's how it is. 

Anyways I'm done that's how I prime my fresh drywall hopefully that gave you some good tips, tricks,  whatever. If you do it differently of course Now that I'm done painting this now I get to open up this wall so we can push this into the wall is no big deal I don't really care it's just a little patch anyways I'm done ready to go home I hope you guys are doing well again hope you got something out of this. If you just paid top dollars for professional drywall boarding and taping you should consider hiring in a pro painter to complete your priming and painting.

The pro painters and decorators over at 1/2 Price Pro Calgary Painting can likely help you save some time and some money on both priming and painting new drywall. You could even get better pricing on our friendly Calgary Painters completing all of your new priming and painting new drywall with a brush & roller work instead of you doing it yourself and risking a not so great looking paint job.