I See a White Wall and Want to Paint it Grey

A house with all white walls leaves a lot to the imagination for new homeowners. Years of living in apartments where we weren’t allowed to paint the walls (I admit my Bayonne apartment years totally violated that concept) left us wanting to cover these white walls with Bob Ross enthusiasm.

This was one of the rooms from my old Bayonne apartment. Once described as a “bag of Skittles” we had a green billiards room, a red & black office, an orange living room, and a blue striped kitchen.

Erin had a few color ideas for our living room and bedroom so we went to Home Depot to get some color cards. We brought them home, taped them up on the wall, discussed which ones we did and didn’t like, and ultimately chose to paint the living room “Sparrow,” the hallway and stairwell “Anonymous” and the bedroom “Subtle Touch.” Each a different shade of grey.

To brighten things up we decided to do the kitchen yellow (a contrast to our new black countertops and stainless steel appliances, though we’ll cover the entire kitchen process in a later blog). The other rooms we selected at a later time (we’ll cover each additional room in later blogposts).

Once we selected the colors we went back to Home Depot and brought John, my brother-in-law, with us to help select paint and painting gear. We opted for low VOC paint (VOC stands for volatile organic compound. Paint with VOC is potentially dangerous and often smelly). Knowing we needed at least two coats of paint, we got two buckets of the living room paint, two buckets for the stairwell and hallway, and one bucket each for the kitchen and bedroom). Six buckets of paint set us back about $220 (about $36 each).

We were fortunate to be able to borrow a lot of painting equipment from John but still had to get some painter’s tape (we went with green Frogtape, on John’s recommendation - about $7.50 a roll). We also had to get some small paint rollers and plastic disposable paint tray liners (total for that was $30).

Things we borrowed from John that you will need to consider buying:

• Paint rollers (large and mini)
• Metal paint trays
• Drop cloths
• Medium sized paint brushes
• Paint edger
• Paint roller extender poles
• Ladders

If I had to estimate, to paint an entire house with new paint and all new equipment, expect to budget about $500. So yeah, John’s painting supplies saved us at least $100 or so.

After you have your paint supplies you will need to do some prep work. We were lucky to have a few guests (my friend Mike and his wife Katie) stop by to help us.

File photo of Mike & Katie.

So with a force of five, we got the living room ready for painting. This entailed:

• Removing light switch plates and central air vent plates.
• Covering them with painter’s tape.
• Laying down drop cloths.
• Putting painter’s tape around the edges/molding.

Once all the painter’s tape is up, we opened the paint cans with a flathead screwdriver and stirred them with wooden stirring sticks (you can grab a handful for free at Home Depot at the paint mixing area). Lay some cardboard down to place the paint cans, paint rollers, and paint bins on as this will prevent too much paint getting on the drop cloths and getting dragged through your house.

After the paint is stirred, put the plastic tray liners in the metal trays and pour the paint into it. Use the medium paintbrush to clean off the paint can of dripping paint. Once the paint is poured, go around the edges of the room (i.e. where the painter’s tape is at) first with the medium sized paintbrush and then over that with the mini roller. This will give you an outline to paint into and the mini rollers will smooth out the paint (since the brush will leaves brush marks).

Mike taping things up.

Me putting down tape.

Once the room is outlined, just like you learned in kindergarten, use the bigger paint rollers to paint within the lines. I’ve seen on some home improvement shows that you should paint in V patterns, but we did vertical strokes (huh, I said stroke) and it came out fine.

John painting.

Once the paint has dried, add a second coat of paint (and if needed, a third). Paint drying can take a few hours and on humid days sometimes longer. After all coats of paint are done, remove the painter’s tape and voila, you have a painted room. Since we opted to not paint the ceiling or the crown molding, we used the paint edger and the medium brush the ensure straight edges around the molding. We also bought a small jar of white paint to spot touch the ceiling and molding (since no matter what painter’s tape you use, there will be some seepage).

So that’s that. As I mentioned, we will go room by room discussing what we did, the paint we chose and other accessories.

Time spent: Living room, hallway, and bedroom = 2 days
Cost: About $200