Gallons of Paint?
Can anyone estimate how many gallons of paint I’ll need for a 740 sq. foot apt? Walls are 9.5 feet high. Am doing primer, 2 coats of color, and glossy white on mouldings.
Can anyone estimate how many gallons of paint I’ll need for a 740 sq. foot apt? Walls are 9.5 feet high. Am doing primer, 2 coats of color, and glossy white on mouldings.
DaveInBedStuy, you recommend that the poster not use high gloss paint, like 12345, I was thinking of painting the trim of my apartment with a glossy white. Is there a reason I shouldn’t?
Thanks!
Yeah – i should clarify; i used at least 2 coats of primer on my plaster and the walls still sucked up paint like no body’s business. We started with 5 layers of wallpaper, which we stripped and TSP’ed, followed by 2 coats of fairly aggressive oil-based primer, and then regular old paint. Getting tinted primer really helped, but the plaster was so uneven in some sections that it was hard to get smooth coverage without multiple coats of paint.
You should put a coat of primer for plaster walls, it will really help you with the adherence and stability of the paint film.
Actually I painted my library with BM Aura and really liked it. I thought the coverage was much better than the other Sherwin Williams paints I used. The paint store guy who sold me the Aura recommended using the Aura specific rollers for better application. Turns out they were $2 cheaper than the generic rollers I was buying anyways, so I went with the Aura rollers. Not sure how much of a difference the rollers made, but i didn’t have any trouble applying.
Also I noticed that my old plaster sucked up paint, and I needed less for the new drywall. Since the plaster has lots of divots and is very uneven, it took a few passes to get total coverage, whereas the drywall is totally flat. I always ran out of paint in the rooms where the walls were plaster, and always had plenty leftover for the rooms that had been gutted and drywalled even though I used the same methodology to calculate square footage and coverage. So you might want to consider that when you calculate how much paint you need.
It’s interesting that I heard over and over again that Benj M or Sherwin is great and Behr is awful. I actually painted my entryway in Behr and found it to be pretty good and I love the way it looks on the wall after one coat. It must be the paint color though because the consensus is that Behr pretty much sucks. Rest of my apartment is Benj M though. Also, whatever you do, don’t buy the Lowe’s brand (forgot the name). Now THAT’S a truly horrible paint.
Yes, Benj Moore or Sherwin Williams.
Benjamin Moore is really much better than most paints, but avoid Aura, it’s hard to apply. Behr is horrible.
Also get a small container of all the colors you get, for future touch ups
And make sure to mix the gallons of color together a few times to make sure that each gallon matches the other. Get a separate pail for this and just dump and mix a few times. Depending how skilled the guy at the paint store is (or how late he was out the night before) you may or may not get perfect matches on that color coat.
Also, don’t buy HD Behr paint. It sucks.