We just moved into a new house, and the garage is "finished", with sheet rock up on all walls and the ceiling. The joints appear to have been taped, mudded, and sanded.
Do I need to put a primer/sealer coat of paint on the walls prior to painting them, or just go ahead and use some flat latex paint?
Use a product made for the job, like USG "First Coat". It's cheaper than common primers and will save money if you only have to put on a single top coat. HTH
Thanks for the advice.....I'd probably have skipped that step if I hadn't learned from you folks.
| | Use a product made for the job, like USG "First Coat". It's cheaper than common | primers and will save money if you only have to put on a single top coat. HTH | | Joe | |
A fellow around the corner from me is painting his two car garage. Both doors are up, there's nothing in the garage, nothing on the driveway. Guess what question I'm tempted to ask him?
First, decide what kind of finished look you want. There are different "levels" of drywall finish, and yours might be a rough one, which is very common in garages. After painting, you might notice little ridges and a lot of imperfections in the taping job. If you want a nicer look, you'll have to have someone take it to a level 4 finish.
Assuming you're going right to painting, again it depends on how you want it to look. Flat latex paint is to a certain extent self priming. Two coats might look OK to you. A good primer will block and seal better. A latex paint won't do anything on stain bleedthrough, but a high solids latex can otherwise be used as a primer. In a garage, people don't usually use more expensive high solids paints anyway. Since it's going to need 2 coats, you might as well make the first coat a good primer.
I wouldn't use primer and didn't use primer the first time, although I did find 7 gallons of primer in the home depot reject bin last time I painted the garage, as well as 3 gallons of colour matched paint. Last time, I got a couple of 5 gallons mis-tints. Yeah, the walls sucked up the paint like they'd never been painted (which they hadn't), but I was using good paint, purchased for $5 a gallon and didn't care. Painted the first garage for $40 and then second garage for $30.
If you don't have a particular colour that MUST go on the garage walls, then start scouring the local paint stores for mistints. Garages take lots of paint and you can't beat good paint at $5 a gallon!
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