[Jeri125]

Hi Everyone!

We bought a fixer and will be doing a whole house renovation as time and money allows. We are thinking of investing in a spray gun. First up is painting about 20 cabinet doors and drawers purchased new. Following will be all new trim, doors, and new kitchen cabinets. We also want to repaint every wall as well as the outside of our single story house.

Would you recommend a spray gun for all of this? If you do recommend a gun – which one? AAA, HVLP, LVLP, ???

We have zero experience using a gun, but we are willing to follow the curve. Are there any good tutorials on-line?

Thank-you!

Jeri

 

[Brushjockey]

I actually recommend doing it by hand. Spraying is a much bigger project and skill than you might think. It sounds like a time saver- but you can ruin things in seconds.
All things need to be taken apart and reassembled, spray area made- complete masking on anything not getting sprayed etc - and that isn't even talking about how to handle the material and the sprayer.

 

[cdaniels]

+1 for a brush and roller. You can mess up more in five seconds with a sprayer than you can fix in five days if you don't know what you're doing.By the time you do all the masking and hardware removal/reassembly and learn to use the sprayer correctly you can brush/roll faster and neater.

 

[chrisn]

It take years to lean how to spray correctly

 

[spraygunn]

HeyJeri,

Save your money you would spend on the spray unit and hone your brushing skills. Yes a good spray system in the right hands can speed a project along, but it doesn’t end with the spraying. Now you have to mask, cover and protect all other areas of the home. Spraying is only a small portion of the project that will not be appreciated by others once it’s finished. If you were to do one home after another, that would be a different story.

 

[SuperJETT]

I'll be the dissenter on this. On the 2500+ sq ft short sale house we bought last fall, everything from the trim, walls, and ceiling needed to be painted. I bought a Graco Magnum with an extension tip and it was $200 well spent.

Just doing the trim saved us hours and hours of time. We have high ceilings, so being able to walk around and spray them from the floor thanks to the extension was awesome. I could do a coat on the ceiling in 4 minutes easily.

We ended up rolling the walls. Since I was going to refinish the floors anyway and we plan on replacing the windows soon, covering them didn't have to be perfect so I'd shoot the trim/windows with the floor and window glass covered, then drape everything from just below the ceiling and shoot the ceiling paint.

For our situation, it saved days and days of painting, but did still require masking the window glass and a lot of prep then refinishing the floors after, but that was planned.

 

[Jeri125]

Thank you all for your input – it is greatly appreciated.

The cabinet doors & drawers (so many!) will all be new, so no problem laying them flat outside or in a garage for painting. When we do order the new inside doors, these too would be easy to lay flat before installing. It just seems like spraying would not only be faster, but give us the smooth finish we are hoping for.

Trim may be another story – I'm assuming they must be painted after installation because of covering up the nail holes? Still – they could be sprayed with prime before – maybe even one coat of paint? I have lots to learn!

If we did decide to invest in a spray system – which would you recommend?

Believe me, I'm not discounting all that you are saying – just doing my homework. At this point, my plan is to pick up a quart of Cabinet-Coat and test on the back side of one of the cabinet doors. I plan to roll the paint on and then back-brush and see how it looks when dry.

Time is really not as important as a smooth flat finish.

Heartfelt thanks to everyone!

Jeri