**Priming Your Walls: Tips and Tricks**

When it comes to priming your walls, there are several things to keep in mind in order to achieve a smooth and even finish. As mentioned earlier, it's best to start by rolling out the entire wall, working from one corner to the other, rather than stopping and starting in the middle of the wall. This will help you maintain a wet edge and prevent dry spots from forming.

In addition to keeping a wet edge, it's also important to keep your primer moving along as much as possible. This means not getting stuck on any imperfections or blemishes, and instead working around them. If you do find a spot that needs extra attention, now is the time to address it before painting over with a coat of paint. Make sure to follow the instructions for your primer, including how long to wait before applying additional coats.

**Choosing the Right Finish**

When it comes to choosing the right finish for your walls, there are several options to consider. Semi-gloss, satin, eggshell, and flat finishes all have their own unique characteristics that may suit different needs and preferences. A semi-gloss finish is known for its durability and ease of cleaning, making it a popular choice for high-traffic areas or kitchens and bathrooms. However, it can also show imperfections more easily than other finishes.

On the other hand, satin and eggshell finishes are often preferred for their soft, subtle sheen and easy cleanability. Satin finishes offer a good balance between durability and appearance, while eggshell finishes provide an even softer, more matte finish. Flat finishes, on the other hand, are known for their low shine and ease of cleaning, but may not be as durable as other options.

**Scrub Ability**

In the past, semi-gloss finishes were often preferred for their scrub ability, making them a good choice for high-traffic areas or families with young children. However, modern paints have made significant strides in improving the scrub ability of flat and eggshell finishes, so these options may not be as necessary as they once were.

**Cleaning Your Brushes and Rollers**

When it comes to cleaning your brushes and rollers, it's generally best to avoid using latex paint. Instead, use a bag or wrapping material to keep them clean and prevent them from becoming clogged with dried-on paint. Simply slip the brush or roller into a bag, twist it shut, and store it in the refrigerator for up to 5-6 days.

This will allow you to work on your painting project without having to constantly clean out your brushes and rollers. And when you're ready to use them again, simply pull them out of the fridge and they'll be good as new. This trick can save you a lot of time and hassle in the long run, and is definitely worth trying.

**Using Sandpaper and Pole Sander**

After applying a coat of paint, it's often helpful to use sandpaper or a pole sander to smooth out any imperfections or lumps of dust that may have accumulated on the surface. This will help create a smooth, even finish for your second coat of paint.

When using sandpaper or a pole sander, be sure to work in small sections and avoid applying too much pressure, which can damage the drywall or paint. A light touch is all you need to get rid of any imperfections and achieve a professional-looking finish.

**Conclusion**

Priming your walls may seem like a daunting task, but with the right techniques and materials, it can be achieved with ease. By following these tips and tricks, you'll be well on your way to creating smooth, even finishes that will last for years to come. Remember to keep your primer moving along, choose the right finish for your needs, clean your brushes and rollers properly, and use sandpaper or a pole sander to smooth out any imperfections.

Whether you're a seasoned DIYer or just starting out, these tips and tricks are sure to be helpful in achieving professional-looking results. And remember, with practice and patience comes experience, so don't be discouraged if things don't turn out perfectly the first time around – keep trying and you'll get there eventually!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi Shannon here from host improvements.com and today I'm going to do this video and we're going to show you how to apply primer onto a freshly drywalled wall it's all sanded and ready to go we just have to put the primer on so the items that you're going to need uh tool wise for for doing this job of priming is you're going to need a metal paint tray which is down here a paint tray liner uh the nice thing with the liner is that it keeps your tray clean your metal tray clean and you can throw this out when you're done so it just simply is molded to fit in there uh you're going to need a paint stir stick you're going to need some kind of opener or bar or something to open the paint can um you're going to need a roller cage which is this and the roller sleeve uh roller sleeve I like to use a semi smooth uh nap which is a 10 mil nap and that's just to do with how long of fibers it's on there that gives you a nice nice coating a paint or primer on there these just simply slide on tight like that uh you're also going to need a paintbrush try to use a good quality paint brush uh suited for the type of paint or primer or whatever that you're using and as well if you're doing walls it's nice to have an extendable pole that you can screw onto that roller cage and uh you'll see when I'm doing it reason for that uh then most importantly you're going to need your painter primer that you're using uh we're using a primer uh the the finished color on this wall is going to be quite dark so what I've done is had the paint company half tint the primer so basically what they've done is taken half of the amounts of colors that would be in the Finish coat and put it into the primer uh just as easier to cover instead of using white primer all the time with such a dark color you can probably easily cover it in two coats of paint then as opposed to three if it was white um so yeah that's the stuff I'm going to get set up here and and we'll go add it so you always want to start out by cutting in cutting in is is using your paintbrush and actually uh taking your paint now obviously I don't have any on here your primer and working into all the inside corners and edges anywhere where you're you're up against you know plugins lights any of that kind of thing so I've got my paint here in my hand uh you could transfer it into a smaller container or whatever but but uh I find it just as easy to leave it in here you don't want to bathe your your brush in there you can see I've just got a quarter in or a/ inch up on there I've dipped it I back wiped the one Edge and now I'm ready to put it up on the wall so I come up I start just a little ways away from the corner and work my way in it takes a little bit of a steady hand a little bit of practice and when you're brush when you're just first starting out with your brush it needs it isn't as smooth either until it gets loaded with a bit of paint a few times so you just want to kind of lay the bristles down so they're extending into that corner and uh you want to you want to have about a brush or brush and a wi and a half width out of the corner so that when you roll uh you know you can easily match up to it you aren't fighting you get your roll right in that corner I'm just come down here in reality the other side of this corner is going to be the same color but I'm just showing you you know if you're cutting into the ceiling or something that you can uh just run it down like that now when you're right up I'm in a in a three-way Corner up there I'm going to use my my paint brush has got a bit of an angle on the end it's shorter on one end sorry shorter on one end than in the other so I'm going to put the pointer your end up I'm going to kind of use it flatten the brush out and manipulate it to get up in that corner takes a little bit of doing a little bit of practice now I'm up against the ceiling there I've got to do the same thing in this case this this is primer and it's half tinted to the wall color and the ceiling is going to be white so I will be priming it white and then it'll get painted weight go along like that I'm going to get this other side now because it's the same color on both sides I can actually be pretty liberal about putting that in there work my way away from the corner like so now I've got to work my way up into this three-way Corner again try not to leave any big drips or ridges or anything smooth it down a bit so so you want to go around your whole room do all your cutting in go around the outside of any plugins switches any of that like I said a breath brush width or brush and a half and then we can get set up to do the roller okay so I've gone around and cut in the rest of this this wall uh typically I would generally do the ceiling first uh so that you cuz it's usually white primer so then you don't have to cut in the white you can if you slop down onto the wall a bit doesn't matter uh then when you come around to cut in your wall you you can cut it in actually nice and neat otherwise like in this case I've got it cut in twice now but just for demonstration purposes here is the reason I did the wall first uh so I've got my sleeve on here when you go a brand new sleeve it's a good idea just to rub your hand over it a couple times kind of pulls out any loose fibers that might be on there kind of gets it conditioned there for for paint now i' I put poured some of my primer already in the tray down here I'm going to go down and and load up my roller and I'm going to start rolling in a corner so the first few times it takes a little bit of work to get the uh when it's a new roller to get a good coverage on that so you can see I've got the the roller fairly saturated now I'm kind of rolling some out I'm not really really pushing down squeezing out I'm just letting the the primer itself uh squeeze off the excess so I've got the roller loaded up now I'm going to take it up to the wall and begin rolling from the bottom up kind of work your way back into the corner within you know about an inch or so of the corner you're trying not to push too hard cuz if you push you're just going to leave a ridge of paint coming off this end and then you have a whole bunch of ridges everywhere uh I always use this end of the roller as the trailing end and uh if anything I'm putting I'm applying just slightly more pressure to this corner so that tapers out back there and doesn't leave a ridge so don't overwork it too much just get it on there so it's covering I always make a consistent Woll I don't stop in the middle of the wall and now I overlap hold halfway onto there work back onto what I just did hold half a roller and then work ahead again about half and it just helps feather into what you've already done we're coming up to a plugin here so I'm going to start just above the roller or the plug in I'm going to go up come down and around my plugin just kind of get that worked in around the bottom of the plug I'm trying to work full length of the wall as much as possible not stopping in the middle you can see we're getting nice even uh full coverage it's a lot easier to see as well when your uh primer is half tinted like this you can really see if you missed a spot or anything always load up your roller good and heavy not heavy so heavy that it's dripping though as you're moving it from the wall from the tray to the wall you don't want to have a huge mess you can see it just gradually moving the head down the wall as a go if you remember in the beginning of the video I mentioned that you may want this extension on the roller makes it a lot easier you're not crouching and bending over all the time it's pretty much completely being done with the arms so I'm going to go ahead and uh roll out the rest of this wall uh once you started a wall try not to stop and start in the in the middle of the wall for too long you want to keep a wet Edge or keep wet primer there so I'll I'll work right from one corner to the other um you know before I change my primer or reload my primer if I can help it just to keep my myself moving along so you don't get a dry Edge um so yeah just work your way along you may come up with that you may find a little blemish in your drywall patching as well so you may have to go back and do a little touch-up but uh usually at this point you've got things pretty good so um but if you do have to this is the time to do it before you paint uh follow your primer instructions as far as how long you have to wait to paint over top of it um some people have written in to our website and ask the difference between using semi gloss or a satin or an eggshell finish paint uh basically the difference is uh with the semigloss you're going to get a lot more flashing which means uh you're going to see a difference uh in the paper where you've mudded and where it hasn't been mudded on the paper with a semigloss it it does look a lot smoother where you put mud than here once you get it all painted so the semigloss will show that easier where the ape shell or the satin generally won't show that or a flat so the flatter the paint the less uh imperfections or differences in the paper texture they're going to show um scrub ability now now it used to be that you wanted a semi gloss for scrub ability so that if you had to wipe the wall you didn't leave a shiny spot uh that's not so true anymore a lot of the flats and eggshells and all that have pretty good scrub ability so uh you know you can wipe them pretty good and they aren't going to leave a shiny spot like they used to so you know a lot of people will stick stick with an eggshell now or a satin finish so I'm going to finish priming this up but uh hopefully we showed you a few tips and tricks uh for priming your walls and generally painting is the same idea now now you go back and you cut in you You' use a roller again roll in everything you can and um basically painting you're probably going to it's going to take two coats priming one coat's always good enough uh make sure you got the proper primer for what you're covering some primers are better on a brand new installation where there's others that are better when you're you know maybe going over some Patchwork or just priming an existing painted wall or anything couple other helpful hints for either priming or painting is that what I like to do after I do my first quat of paint is I'll use my hand sander that I use for drywalling and real fine paper and I'll give the wall a quick sand or the ceiling a quick sand this will knock off any lumps of uh dust from drywall or lumps of paint that got trapped in in your paint and you'll get a way smoother finish on your last coat of paint so just give it a quick once over doesn't have to be anything crazy you can use a pole sander as well um again just give the wall a quick once over um and then as far as your brushes and rollers you know in between coats or you know maybe you got to stop and go and do something or whatever you're stopping anyways you don't want to clean your brush or roller out uh latex paint you can always slip a bag over top of the either the roller or the brush wrap them up nice and tight and uh stick it away in the fridge it doesn't have to go in the freezer can stay in the fridge up to 5 or 6 days and and you know you pull it out and it'll be fresh as can be so like with a roller any kind of bag a shopping bag any kind of bag just slip it right inside like so give a bit of a Twist set it in the refrigerator you're good to go same thing with the brush just put it right inside and uh then then you don't have to clean it out all the time okay so that's our that's our wrap up on priming drywall um we've given you a few tips and hints and hopefully this will get you through your next project uh you can also find more articles on our website at house improvements.com uh you can visit our YouTube channel as well and there's other videos on on other topics there and uh yeah that's good thanks for watchinghi Shannon here from host improvements.com and today I'm going to do this video and we're going to show you how to apply primer onto a freshly drywalled wall it's all sanded and ready to go we just have to put the primer on so the items that you're going to need uh tool wise for for doing this job of priming is you're going to need a metal paint tray which is down here a paint tray liner uh the nice thing with the liner is that it keeps your tray clean your metal tray clean and you can throw this out when you're done so it just simply is molded to fit in there uh you're going to need a paint stir stick you're going to need some kind of opener or bar or something to open the paint can um you're going to need a roller cage which is this and the roller sleeve uh roller sleeve I like to use a semi smooth uh nap which is a 10 mil nap and that's just to do with how long of fibers it's on there that gives you a nice nice coating a paint or primer on there these just simply slide on tight like that uh you're also going to need a paintbrush try to use a good quality paint brush uh suited for the type of paint or primer or whatever that you're using and as well if you're doing walls it's nice to have an extendable pole that you can screw onto that roller cage and uh you'll see when I'm doing it reason for that uh then most importantly you're going to need your painter primer that you're using uh we're using a primer uh the the finished color on this wall is going to be quite dark so what I've done is had the paint company half tint the primer so basically what they've done is taken half of the amounts of colors that would be in the Finish coat and put it into the primer uh just as easier to cover instead of using white primer all the time with such a dark color you can probably easily cover it in two coats of paint then as opposed to three if it was white um so yeah that's the stuff I'm going to get set up here and and we'll go add it so you always want to start out by cutting in cutting in is is using your paintbrush and actually uh taking your paint now obviously I don't have any on here your primer and working into all the inside corners and edges anywhere where you're you're up against you know plugins lights any of that kind of thing so I've got my paint here in my hand uh you could transfer it into a smaller container or whatever but but uh I find it just as easy to leave it in here you don't want to bathe your your brush in there you can see I've just got a quarter in or a/ inch up on there I've dipped it I back wiped the one Edge and now I'm ready to put it up on the wall so I come up I start just a little ways away from the corner and work my way in it takes a little bit of a steady hand a little bit of practice and when you're brush when you're just first starting out with your brush it needs it isn't as smooth either until it gets loaded with a bit of paint a few times so you just want to kind of lay the bristles down so they're extending into that corner and uh you want to you want to have about a brush or brush and a wi and a half width out of the corner so that when you roll uh you know you can easily match up to it you aren't fighting you get your roll right in that corner I'm just come down here in reality the other side of this corner is going to be the same color but I'm just showing you you know if you're cutting into the ceiling or something that you can uh just run it down like that now when you're right up I'm in a in a three-way Corner up there I'm going to use my my paint brush has got a bit of an angle on the end it's shorter on one end sorry shorter on one end than in the other so I'm going to put the pointer your end up I'm going to kind of use it flatten the brush out and manipulate it to get up in that corner takes a little bit of doing a little bit of practice now I'm up against the ceiling there I've got to do the same thing in this case this this is primer and it's half tinted to the wall color and the ceiling is going to be white so I will be priming it white and then it'll get painted weight go along like that I'm going to get this other side now because it's the same color on both sides I can actually be pretty liberal about putting that in there work my way away from the corner like so now I've got to work my way up into this three-way Corner again try not to leave any big drips or ridges or anything smooth it down a bit so so you want to go around your whole room do all your cutting in go around the outside of any plugins switches any of that like I said a breath brush width or brush and a half and then we can get set up to do the roller okay so I've gone around and cut in the rest of this this wall uh typically I would generally do the ceiling first uh so that you cuz it's usually white primer so then you don't have to cut in the white you can if you slop down onto the wall a bit doesn't matter uh then when you come around to cut in your wall you you can cut it in actually nice and neat otherwise like in this case I've got it cut in twice now but just for demonstration purposes here is the reason I did the wall first uh so I've got my sleeve on here when you go a brand new sleeve it's a good idea just to rub your hand over it a couple times kind of pulls out any loose fibers that might be on there kind of gets it conditioned there for for paint now i' I put poured some of my primer already in the tray down here I'm going to go down and and load up my roller and I'm going to start rolling in a corner so the first few times it takes a little bit of work to get the uh when it's a new roller to get a good coverage on that so you can see I've got the the roller fairly saturated now I'm kind of rolling some out I'm not really really pushing down squeezing out I'm just letting the the primer itself uh squeeze off the excess so I've got the roller loaded up now I'm going to take it up to the wall and begin rolling from the bottom up kind of work your way back into the corner within you know about an inch or so of the corner you're trying not to push too hard cuz if you push you're just going to leave a ridge of paint coming off this end and then you have a whole bunch of ridges everywhere uh I always use this end of the roller as the trailing end and uh if anything I'm putting I'm applying just slightly more pressure to this corner so that tapers out back there and doesn't leave a ridge so don't overwork it too much just get it on there so it's covering I always make a consistent Woll I don't stop in the middle of the wall and now I overlap hold halfway onto there work back onto what I just did hold half a roller and then work ahead again about half and it just helps feather into what you've already done we're coming up to a plugin here so I'm going to start just above the roller or the plug in I'm going to go up come down and around my plugin just kind of get that worked in around the bottom of the plug I'm trying to work full length of the wall as much as possible not stopping in the middle you can see we're getting nice even uh full coverage it's a lot easier to see as well when your uh primer is half tinted like this you can really see if you missed a spot or anything always load up your roller good and heavy not heavy so heavy that it's dripping though as you're moving it from the wall from the tray to the wall you don't want to have a huge mess you can see it just gradually moving the head down the wall as a go if you remember in the beginning of the video I mentioned that you may want this extension on the roller makes it a lot easier you're not crouching and bending over all the time it's pretty much completely being done with the arms so I'm going to go ahead and uh roll out the rest of this wall uh once you started a wall try not to stop and start in the in the middle of the wall for too long you want to keep a wet Edge or keep wet primer there so I'll I'll work right from one corner to the other um you know before I change my primer or reload my primer if I can help it just to keep my myself moving along so you don't get a dry Edge um so yeah just work your way along you may come up with that you may find a little blemish in your drywall patching as well so you may have to go back and do a little touch-up but uh usually at this point you've got things pretty good so um but if you do have to this is the time to do it before you paint uh follow your primer instructions as far as how long you have to wait to paint over top of it um some people have written in to our website and ask the difference between using semi gloss or a satin or an eggshell finish paint uh basically the difference is uh with the semigloss you're going to get a lot more flashing which means uh you're going to see a difference uh in the paper where you've mudded and where it hasn't been mudded on the paper with a semigloss it it does look a lot smoother where you put mud than here once you get it all painted so the semigloss will show that easier where the ape shell or the satin generally won't show that or a flat so the flatter the paint the less uh imperfections or differences in the paper texture they're going to show um scrub ability now now it used to be that you wanted a semi gloss for scrub ability so that if you had to wipe the wall you didn't leave a shiny spot uh that's not so true anymore a lot of the flats and eggshells and all that have pretty good scrub ability so uh you know you can wipe them pretty good and they aren't going to leave a shiny spot like they used to so you know a lot of people will stick stick with an eggshell now or a satin finish so I'm going to finish priming this up but uh hopefully we showed you a few tips and tricks uh for priming your walls and generally painting is the same idea now now you go back and you cut in you You' use a roller again roll in everything you can and um basically painting you're probably going to it's going to take two coats priming one coat's always good enough uh make sure you got the proper primer for what you're covering some primers are better on a brand new installation where there's others that are better when you're you know maybe going over some Patchwork or just priming an existing painted wall or anything couple other helpful hints for either priming or painting is that what I like to do after I do my first quat of paint is I'll use my hand sander that I use for drywalling and real fine paper and I'll give the wall a quick sand or the ceiling a quick sand this will knock off any lumps of uh dust from drywall or lumps of paint that got trapped in in your paint and you'll get a way smoother finish on your last coat of paint so just give it a quick once over doesn't have to be anything crazy you can use a pole sander as well um again just give the wall a quick once over um and then as far as your brushes and rollers you know in between coats or you know maybe you got to stop and go and do something or whatever you're stopping anyways you don't want to clean your brush or roller out uh latex paint you can always slip a bag over top of the either the roller or the brush wrap them up nice and tight and uh stick it away in the fridge it doesn't have to go in the freezer can stay in the fridge up to 5 or 6 days and and you know you pull it out and it'll be fresh as can be so like with a roller any kind of bag a shopping bag any kind of bag just slip it right inside like so give a bit of a Twist set it in the refrigerator you're good to go same thing with the brush just put it right inside and uh then then you don't have to clean it out all the time okay so that's our that's our wrap up on priming drywall um we've given you a few tips and hints and hopefully this will get you through your next project uh you can also find more articles on our website at house improvements.com uh you can visit our YouTube channel as well and there's other videos on on other topics there and uh yeah that's good thanks for watching\n"