The 2nd floor is continuing to get marginal improvements. I finished priming the walls, ceiling, and built-in Friday night. It took about 4 hours and 2 more gallons of primer….
And then I noticed the entire section that I missed. Whoops 😉 Luckily I hadn’t trashed the itty-bitty 4″ roller that I used on the built-in. It took a while, but it was better than using another roller cover.
Michael also installed the MDF trim around the new half-wall and the staircase. It will be painted white after we fill the nail holes, etc.
The room is quite colorless right now.
We started out with a Valspar latex drywall primer ($13.53), and switched to a 5 gallon Zinsser Bulls-Eye water-base primer ($12.51 per gallon). So far, I prefer the Zinsser. The Valspar technically had better coverage, but at the expense of using a lot of paint. The Zinsser was low-odor, but the Valspar smelled about like Elmer’s glue; nothing. We used about 3 gallons total for this room.
I used a traditional roller on a broomstick; not one of those (in my opinion) uselessly expensive specialty ceiling rollers. I didn’t have any splatters or drips with either primer. The built in has two coats of primer with a cabinet-grade foam brush, it will probably get one or two more coats of primer before I start with paint.
After priming, we can really tell how well we did with our first drywall mudding job… It varies. Some seams look perfect, and some look like whoever finished it had clearly never seen it done before 🙂 The scary portion of the ceiling in the basement looks textbook perfect.
We’ll paint the ceiling next, but we have some repair work on two seams and some patching on the ceiling before we can. Then the blue goes up on the walls.
Today Michael worked on the railing (the fun part). Soon we’ll be left with only lame projects, lol. Drywall repair won’t be nearly as interesting as installing the new lights, for instance…
Here’s the project so far…
Demo! (Carpet, Popcorn, trim, the 1/2 wall)Frame 1/2 Wall!Drywall!- Paint (25%)
- Install paper floor!
- Build a Built-in (50%)
- Finishing touches! (Replace brown power outlets, light fixtures, air registers, etc.)
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