If there’s one thing we’ve made clear about our new house, it’s that we’re not thrilled with the existing trim colors.
Somewhere between Williamsburg Blue and Muddy Mauve, our enthusiasm for painting wavered between excitement and dread. Not sure which.
Since all the carpet was already removed and the new hardwoods hadn’t been installed yet, we decided to paint the upstairs trim — and the doors — while the subfloor was exposed. That meant tackling trim in four bedrooms and closets, a long hallway, nine windows with lots of mullions, and sixteen doors. We removed and de-hardwared each door first to make painting easier.
Given the scope, a paint sprayer made sense. After a recommendation, we bought a Graco TrueCoat II on sale at Lowe’s for $180 (we later switched to a different Wagner model with better results). Buying instead of renting felt right since we’ll have many more painting projects in the house (there’s still a lot of blue trim downstairs).
The sprayer turned out to be simpler than expected — basically a plastic cup attached to a gun that plugs in. Setup was minimal, though we read the instructions carefully before starting. Then we began with a primer coat.
Since cleanup is often cited as the biggest hassle with sprayers, we used disposable bags in the paint cup to cut down on cleaning time and avoid extra steps afterward.
We don’t have many process photos because one of us watched Clara downstairs while the other sprayed, and the work moved quickly. We could spray the baseboards of a room in about 10–15 minutes, with most of that time spent refilling the paint cup.
Spraying is definitely much faster, but it uses more paint. I could only do about two sides of a door before refilling. Still, watching that blue fade away with each pass was incredibly satisfying. It’s not wasted paint so much as getting more coverage — spraying the front of a door once can be equivalent to two brushed-on coats.
We’ll do a more detailed post on sprayer technique once we’re more practiced, but for now we’re learning as we go. Our biggest challenge is resisting the urge to touch up every missed spot, since it’s easy to over-apply and cause drips.
When applied slowly and with restraint, the finish is smooth and factory-like.
We chose to hand-paint the windows instead of spraying to avoid overspray on the glass and potential drips in tight areas. In hindsight, that decision has trade-offs — hand-painting required scraping paint off glass with a razor and each blue/mauve window took one coat of primer plus three coats of paint. It was labor-intensive.
Spraying took two mornings — one for primer and one for paint — but we’ve made several additional trips to hand-paint windows and other hard-to-spray spots. The results are already noticeably better.
We didn’t tape off walls or floors around most sprayed areas, except for a few outlets and vents that were too close for comfort. That means the walls will need painting soon too, but that’s a separate project.
Some rooms, like the guest room and our master, had cream trim and doors that didn’t require primer. Overall, we used 2 gallons of primer to cover four rooms, four closets, nine windows, sixteen doors, and a large hallway, with about 30% of the surfaces already cream-colored.
We used 4.5 gallons of white paint. In hindsight, buying a single five-gallon bucket at the start would have saved multiple trips to the store.
We chose Benjamin Moore Ultra Spec in Simply White, semi-gloss. It’s a contractor-grade, low-VOC option that’s more affordable than Benjamin Moore’s Natura line and has performed well so far. At our local store it cost about $36 per gallon, which made buying five gallons more reasonable.
To select the shade, we brought home about ten white swatches and taped them up together. Simply White looked the clearest and most balanced — not too yellow and not too blue. It will read even better once the yellowed walls and ceilings are repainted.
Our total spending for this project was:
- Paint sprayer: $180
- Primer, 2 gallons: $36 (sale price)
- Paint, 5 gallons: $180 (we have half a gallon left)
- TOTAL: $396
It’s more than we first expected, but because we need the new floors installed before moving, the speed of spraying was worth it. Now that we own the sprayer, the cost will be spread across many future uses (there’s still a lot of blue trim to tackle).
Next up is rehanging the doors after replacing some old, pitted brass hardware, then getting the hardwoods installed. We considered painting walls, ceilings, and closet interiors while the subfloor is exposed, but our move date is approaching (about two weeks away). We can live with unpainted walls and ceilings for a short while, but missing floors would be harder to accept — and we’re comfortable painting around installed hardwoods if necessary.
So that’s what we’ve been up to lately. How about you?