How We Quickly Painted The Interior of Our Home

Last week I shared all about our process of choosing the right paint color to paint throughout our home. We really wanted to pick a main color that would look great in the natural light, but also enhance all the custom touches we’ll be adding over time. After a week or so of looking at the paint samples in different lighting, we landed on Gray Mist by Benjamin Moore. It’s a lovely creamy color that has a light green undertone. It looks amazing with white, black and wood tones… all of my favorite things. 

We couldn’t wait to see the instant transformation this would bring, so I’m sharing how we quickly painted the interior of our home. Nearly every single surface of this house has a fresh coat of paint, and it feels amazing! 

Here’s our process for painting the house, and the supplies we used. 

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Tools:

• Paint Sprayer– We love this one and can’t say enough great things about it!
• Primer- We used Ace’s brand in a 5 gallon bucket
• Paint
• Drill– This is ours. 
• Mixing Paddle
• Mask
• Clear Plastic
• Painter’s Tape
• 2″ Paint Brush
• Semi-Smooth Roller
• Roller & Paint Tray

Ceilings Color:

• Stock White, Clark & Kensington Ceiling Flat paint. We didn’t have this tinted, but used the white right from the 5 gallon bucket. We had them shake it really well.

Wall Color:

• Gray Mist by Benjamin Moore, mixed in Ace Royal with an eggshell finish. 

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Since we had scraped off the popcorn ceilings earlier, we hired a handyman to come in and retexture the ceilings to match the existing knock down texture throughout the house. He also had to fill and patch several holes where we had electrical and A/C work done. That meant priming was a must!

We primed all of the ceilings and several walls that had new texture installed. It absorbed it like a sponge, so we went ahead and did two coats.

I also went through the house and removed all of the old outlet/ switch covers and started covering the windows with plastic. We covered the air return vents, thermostat, light switches and outlets… basically anything we didn’t want paint to get all over.

After the primer dried, we came back and sprayed the ceilings with the flat ceiling paint. Todd worked his way across the ceilings in sections, going in the same direction. After the first coat dried, he started on the second coat, working his way across the ceiling, but this time going in the opposite direction as the first coat, giving the ceiling a really nice coverage. 

(Don’t mind the paint on the brick fireplace… that’s getting a big makeover at some point!)

With the ceilings finished, we started on the walls. At this point, Todd had a really great feel of the sprayer and the coverage it put off. We honestly can’t speak highly enough about this paint sprayer. The coverage is amazing and it’s such a smooth spray!

We did a closet first and it was basically love at first site! This color is good.

Of all the rooms, the guest bedroom was probably the most dramatic. We both couldn’t wait to cover up the blue paint…

Because neither one of us wanted to tape off the freshly painted ceilings, we opted to only spray up to a certain part of the wall to avoid overspray getting on the ceiling. We found the sweet spot, which was about a foot and a half below the ceiling.

Believe it or not, we were able to get full coverage in one coat! Bye, bye blue! 

We worked our way throughout the house, and while Todd sprayed the walls (to the stopping point where it wouldn’t get on the ceilings), I started cutting in next to the ceiling and rolling the top portion of the walls. 

I had the tedious job, but it went quickly and before we knew it, the house was painted and looking so fresh! I’ve said it about 100 times, but I’ll say it again… the power of paint is truly amazing! 

Here’s the basement, after we got all the walls painted…

And the blue guest room…

There were also a few rooms in the house that I wanted to paint with a different color, the kitchen being one of them. We could have sprayed it on, but I chose to roll the paint on and it went fast.  

Spoiler: Since we’re doing black kitchen cabinets, I wanted a soft cream color for the walls. After much debate, we chose China White by Benjamin Moore. 

(Flash back to our rotted kitchen subfloor…)

And since our cabinets have backs, I only painted the areas where we wouldn’t be installing cabinets…

Just having a fresh coat of paint really brightened things up. It was another huge step in the big remodeling puzzle…. and that meant installing the floors was next on the list! Yesss!