Sherwin Williams . Benjamin Moore , California are all fine paints...Take your pick...Was back at a house I drywalled and the homeowner used Behr Paint on the walls and ceiling and it looked fine..Never tried it myself...
The 1 hour dry time troubles me more than the $55/gallon.
My painting problem has always been this:
If I use too little paint, it doesn't cover in one coat.
If I try to cover in one coat by using more paint, it drips, runs and sags.
I'm resigned to using 2 coats since it's easier than trying to fix the drips, runs and sags.
Now, at $55 a gallon, I would need some strong assurances that the paint would cover in one coat, even with my amateurish skills, since the stated one hour dry time is not going to give me *any* time to fix the drips, runs and sags.
That's why I can't use products like B-I-N Shellac based primer. It dries too fast for me to fix my mistakes.
clipped
Folks go overboard on BIN and Zinsser brands, without understanding the specifics of each primer. BIN shellac is great, but for very specific stain-blocking purposes. Other companies make equally good primers for stain blocking. BIN shellac also comes in a spray can, but it is highly flammable. Wonderful stain blocker but requires special caution. I used it on a kitchen ceiling, warm night, windows open. When I filled the kitchen with spray mist, I remembered I had forgotten to shut off the pilot on the gas range! Eek! Crawled under the tarp real quick to shut off the pilot, after briefly considering evacuating the house :o)
BIN and Zinsser labels are reliable...I've used Zinsser Bullseye water-based primer on Formica...worked great, still holding up fine. That one, as I recall, is on the thick side, as well. A little sanding prior to painting.
I'd have to agree with Nate here. Even the finest Kilz colors that guarantee one coat coverage, usually take two coats to make it right. Now if you're putting yuppie beige over yuppie beige , probably a one coat could be possible.
steve
Personally, I find that to be even *harder* to do, unless I have good lighting in the room that I'm working on - not the paint's fault, but when the colors are close, it's easy to have a few holidays that you don't notice until you've already cleaned your roller!
nate
good point. I was trying to find flaws in my sheetrock mud job the other day, and it made a world of difference looking at it from one direction as opposed to the other.
s..been awhile since I posted my OP
I finally proceeded with a trial, albeit anything but scientific.
I bought Behr primer, at 11.99/can, SW Drywall primer at 21.99 (or maybe it was 19.99)/can, and PPG Speed Hide primer at 19.99 less 10% discount (17.99/can), Kilz general purpose primer at 11-something a can. All cans are 1 gal buckets.
I used them mostly on unprimed drywall. I also used them on some bare pine. I used a Purdy brush and Shur-Line rollers. The surface temp was 50-60. The dry-time temp was 60-65. I'm painting a 24x12x8h room (office) in my detached garage/shop. I'm also painting the rest (24x24x8h) when temps warm. I did lay down some Kilz in the corners and about 12 foot of one wall.
I did not use the SW on a large area of drywall. It was the last one used, and the drywall I have remaining is too cold to prime at this time. I only used it on some bare pine window trim.
Here is my random thoughts and perceptions..
Behr is the white-est and thinest. The tape and mud work are very visible once it dries (and during application). It went on well with a brush. The Kilz took a bit more effort to apply with the brush. PPG is the least white but clearly thickest -- it nearly hides out the tape and mud work. It applies well with a brush -- a bit less effort than the Kilz, and again, much thicker than the Behr. Kilz is somewhere between Behr and PPG, but seems to leave a slightly better finish than Behr. I topcoated with some 2-4 year-old Behr Prem Plus mid-tone green paint. On the Behr primed wall, the sheen seems a bit glossier than the PPG primed wall. The difference on the Kilz primed wall is negligible. The PPG maybe gives a slightly more uniform and consistent look and feel -- this is highy subjective however. The topcoat will need a 2nd coat -- or at least some roller touchup to cover well. The SW is thinner than the PPG, a bit thicker than Behr. The SW has a very unique and distinctive odor. The Behr has an amonia odor.
I cannot really pick a clear winner. If I was tempted to chose one for a single coat coverage -- say for my ceiling and it would not be topcoated, I would clearly chose PPG. It just about hides the tape seems. I'm not sure if the PPG should even be used for a one-coat however. If not, then this point is mute. But, I do plan to buy another gallon of PPG and finish my ceiling with it -- and possibly just call the ceiling done. I do not find any points about topcoating on the PPG container. On the SW it clearly states it should be topcoated. Once a topcoat - even just one coat is applied, it's hard to find any real differences. This pretty much leads me to the conclusion, that the primer may as well just be of the same brand as the topcoat and forget about all other factors. The primer, assuming there is some design behind it, is probably most effective with a paint from the same company. It also sort of leads me to seriously consider that for existing paint, the better choice may be one from the same company. In otherwords -- if my house is painted with BM on the exterior, maybe it's best to use BM again for future painting. For interior I would not worry about it.
Looking at this differently -- I don't see a strong correlation between price and final result. While I've yet to give the SW a fair shot, it's going to be really hard to justify $20/gal when the Behr/ Kilz are $12/gal, and the PPG at $18/gal clearly does hide much better. If I needed the hide, the PPG wins, but on a topcoat or two- topcoat scenario, then the less costly Behr/Kilz options seem pretty reasonable. If I had easy access to Kilz paint, then maybe I'd opt for the Kilz primer. If the WalMart brand paint is really Kilz, then I guess I do, otherwise, Behr, Valspar, PPG, SW are more widely available to me.
For the average DIY-er, I cannot overwhelmingly see paying 2x for SW or even PPG. Maybe if I was doing this daily or even monthly, I could find a better agrument for a more expensive paint. As it is -- when painting once or twice a year, the bigger issues tend to be moving around furniture, prep, and the struggles with cutting-in, or taping off. To that end I picked up a $3 Shur-Line pad with 2 rollers that claims to be good for trim. My initial impression is that it shows promise. Cutting-in with a brush along door/window trim is never crisp enough for me. I get better each time, but it's a painstaking job and when I do this only once a year, it takes me hours to re-learn.
This is clearly not addressing the longevity of the primer or paint job. But then again, for interior, I'm not convinced it's going to make any difference. I'd just buy the top line of paint from whichever brand I chose. I'd used a gloss or semi-gloss on trim (personally I like real wood anyway) -- and flat or eggshell. My guess is that after 5 years the paint will look very good and that in
10 years it will still look good. And in 10-15 it's going to be repainted anyway.Sidenote -- the Behr topcoat paint really sticks to my brush. It was a brand new Purdy and I cannot get the brush like-new clean after scrubbing with soap and water for 30 minutes. I only painted about 2 hours max with the brush. Maybe that's a strong point for the paint, but it really stinks that I cannot get my brush clean. For this issue alone -- I could be swayed to another brand ;-)
So -- there ya have it. I'd love to see a 6 sided room - each painted with specific brand (Behr, Valspar, SW, BM, PPG, Walmart) by the same painter.
I had a quart of several-year-old (probably 3-7) Behr exterior semi- gloss white that I brushed onto the window/door trim. Again -- this stuff is very thick. It says dries to touch in 2 hours, but it was drying to touch in 10 minutes. Again -- it was impossible with soap and water to get it off the brush. Much of this is probably my inexperience, but it's drying way too fast for me to work with, although it seems to look OK now that it's dried. I took two approaches -- put it on heavy and rubbed it on light.
For exterior paints - go name brand - Columbia, Behr, Sherwin Williams, Pittsburgh... I used a local brand for exterior once - it was pealing by the next year.
Interior, be sure to shop the same place. I don't do Wal Mart, with the turn over you never know what you are going to get. Brand is less important as it does not get the wear and tear of the exterior.
My experience w/ Behr exterior (bestest at the time about 5 yrs ago now) was and remains quite good.
Used about 40 gal ea oil-base primer and latex gloss topcoat white on barn. Each sprayed and brushed well and covered well. I'd have no qualms in recommending it or using it again.
It has and is holding up well w/ the exception of a couple of areas that were especially weathered and apparently we didn't get prep'ed well enough. It is 90-yr old barn that hadn't been painted in 50 years. The structure is so large (40x66x14 at corner/nearly 40 to haymow ridge/30 to gambrel roof break line) that despite spending months in sanding and using oxalic acid it was simply impossible to not have a few places that didn't get the level of attention they needed. Have seen no place w/ new material that has any adhesion problems whatsoever.
I haven't noticed any particular difficulty in cleaning brushes.
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Re: the brush cleaning.
It was a brand new Purdy 2.5" angled XL Glide.
After painting for at most 2 hours with the "green" Behr interior, and then washing with warm/hot water and soap, there were strands on the brush that were encased in the dried paint and it would not come off. Now -- I'm not saying that the brush was "gunked up" so bad that it's not useable. I was just expecting that I could remove ALL signs of paint and see a clean brush. But there are traces of "green" and now "white" paint on the bristles. My wife used my last Purdy.. and left it soaking in yellow Behr for hours. She also angled the brush backwards and curved the angled tip. We scrubbed it with about everything in the shop, and got it back to useable -- but the bristles are permanently curved and it's worthless for a cut-in brush. It's a great general purpose slap-it-on brush. I never thought much about it
-- until now and started to think that the Behr paint might be drying so rapidly that it seals to the bristles well before they can be washed out. With the new brush I dipped it into water before the paint. I generally try to only get the brush 1/2-way into the paint. I try to keep it to 1/3rd.
This started out as a "which is best" primer discussion. At least in my case, I could not find a strong argument for using the more expensive primers except maybe the PPG speed-hide if the desire is one coat and no topcoat coverage. That's likely going to be a rare case. For me, though, that could possibly work for my office/shop ceiling. Just lay down the PPG primer and be done. If I can do that, then for $18 and my time to put it on ONCE, it's a good solution. But if I have to add a topcoat -- albeit a ceiling paint, then I may as well go with the $12 Behr primer.
The other consideration for the DIYer -- is store hours. HD (Behr) and Lowes (Valspar) are open when the paint stores are not. Again -- I know -- it's maybe not the optimum "paint" solution, but for the DIYer, there are other factors that are more significant -- or so it would seem. Maybe I should say so long as the paint stays on the walls, wears OK, and can be repainted with no ill-effects. Of course that's going to take 10+ years to conclude.
I called the store that sold me the PPG speed-hide. Their strong recommendation is to top-coat. They offered Coronado ceiling paint for $13/gallon. Behr at HD is 20/gal or 25/2gals. But that gets back to my point about topcoating. So the speed-hide sealer was $18/gal and the Behr primer is $12/gal (or $55 for 5 gal). If I topcoat, then I don't see a strong argument for the more expensive primer.
I think I will try to water-down the Behr a bit and see if that helps.
If you had SW or BM paint that was "about gone" two years after painting, something was dreadfully wrong. Both are high quality. My parents' home was repainted after 10 years of wearing it's original coat of BM semi-gloss. It looked as good then as when it was originally painted. Any paint failing that quickly had some defect, either in application or in storage or a major factory f-up. I tried Behr paint once, for furniture, and it was crap.
I haven't followed your entire thread, so perhaps have missed some points. I would not leave a primer as a final finish unless appearance was of no concern. But, then, why bother in the first place? You don't get the same protection and ease of cleaning with primer only in most cases. The high-hide may save you a coat of paint, so the price may not be that important.
I really like Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams. Behr is not nearly as good, perhaps overpriced for what it is. Check Consumer Reports--sometimes the best paint depends on the color. With all the time-consuming preparation work, I'll spend the extra money and get the best I can find. A good paint job is all about the prep work.
What bugs me is the choices of "quality" of paint at SW/BM/PPG. I don't understand why they need more than 2 choices. The "good" and the "bad". Do they really need the "pretty good" and "not so bad" lines? There really cannot be that much of materials price difference. They likely "water down" to make the cheap stuff. So the point is always buy the best. So Behr at 25/gal vs SW at 45/ gal. In the big scheme of things that 20 difference is really not too significant, but on the flip side, is there really a significant difference in the ease of application or wear characteristics either? Probably not -- at least for the average DIYer. LIke I noted earlier -- the bigger obstacles are the prep, and when looking at the finished surface, generally there are more distractions than the paint itself -- visible nail holes, uneven miter joints, unsanded areas, poor joints, and so on. If I focus just on the paint alone, then maybe I can find a few brush marks or uneven coverage, but on the whole the paint is going to be minor compared to the rest. Now -- if one has all the perfect prep -- well, this discussion then is probably mute.
Looking at my office that I'm painting -- what's most visible (after priming, 1 topcoat on the drywall, 1 topcoat on the trim ) is --- the cutout in the drywall I did to add some 220V breakers to the shopside, the open miters on the window/door trim, all the stuff piled up in the middle of the floor while I wait to get this done, etc. I don't think once the paint job is done, I'm going to notice the brush marks or slight differences of coverage on the rolled areas. I just doubt BM, SW, PPG or others would make a significant difference compared to Behr, Valspar, or probably even Walmart brand. That's my opinion on interior. For exterior -- my main criteria would be longevity. We have BM on the house now. It's 10 years old and is showing some signs of fading. Nothing peeling that I can see. If I can get 10 years on an exterior paint, I think I'm pretty happy with that. 15 would be wonderful.
I have known people who repainted interior rooms every 2 or 3 years, just for color change. Those, and the people on more limited budgets, probably lean toward lower cost. When I paint, I go to great pains to prep thoroughly because I want the paint to last forever. Had one kitchen with BM alkyd semi that was still in great shape after 15 years and many cleanings. I painted my present kitchen 2-3 years ago for what I expect will be the final time. By the time it needs to be repainted, I may be too old and feeble to do it myself :o) Haven't ever thought in those terms before :o) Cost is a factor in when I will paint, but when I do it is with a choice quality of paint - I go with SW or BM and don't really compare within either as to cost - just pick from what they have. Always alkyd semi for bath, kitchen, doors and trim. I use leftover paint sometimes to renew an old or scavengered piece of furniture and for craft projects. I can mix in some artist oil paint and save buying a whole quart for a small project. Handy stuff :o)
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