My husband and I love to DIY. Neither one of love to paint, but we are too cheap to pay someone what we can do ourselves when it only cost us paint, supplies and time.
Some may claim that the savings is not that significant, but I know that it has resulted in more money in our pocket.
My in laws live in a house of similar size to ours and they had professionals paint their interior walls for $2500 but trim and doors were not included. Our house has had every surface painted including trim, doors, some cabinets and most ceilings for the cost of about $600. Because I have painted it all myself, we have saved a minimum of $1900 comparing to my in-laws costs by not hiring someone to do the work for us.
Although we have been painting houses and many pieces of furniture for 11 years now, we just purchased a paint sprayer. Why did we finally purchase a sprayer? We have a significant amount of wooden fence to paint and my husband is now building furniture for our house, and we are hopeful a sprayer will achieve a smoother finish.
Our first project was custom built twin bunk beds. Not only are they custom to fit the room they are going to go in, but they are built “daddy strong.”
The setup of our particular sprayer was fairly easy. As with any paint job, there is some prep work prior to painting. My husband hung multiple tarps in the garage to protect items from overspray, we had to prepare the machine and ensure that the area was free of as much dust as possible before beginning to spray. We used a battery operated mini blower to blow out dust.
Advantages of a sprayer:
- You cover a lot of area quickly.
- You get a smooth even finish most of the time.
Disadvantages of a sprayer:
- The paint goes everywhere and I mean everywhere. We thought we had our garage well covered, but most of it now has a fine layer of white paint dust.
- It takes a lot of paint. In no time, it sucked up an entire bucket of primer. It likely would have taken about as much primer if I had hand painted, but it feels like more when it empties the can so quickly.
- It definitely takes some getting used to. I have used it three times and I still have not figured out how to not overspray and prevent drips. Too much volume in one area will result in drips.
- It is a process to clean it. I was surprised by the cleaning process though in hindsight I should not have been. It is paint and all paint projects require a good bit of clean up.
It will be a great addition to our list of tools and will make painting our fence significantly less time consuming. Even with the cost of paint and the amount of money spent on the sprayer, painting the fence ourselves will save us a $1000 based on the quotes we have received from professionals.
I recommend purchasing a sprayer if you desire to achieve a smooth even finish and have large project ahead. I do not recommend using inside of our house unless the house is largely unfinished or you have taped up every surface in your house to protect it from the paint dust.
Writer Bio: Summer Bolte
I spend most of my time and days with my three kids, husband and dog. My kids frequently play near me as I garden, cook, DIY and volunteer. My most unusual paying job has to be feeding fruit flies in a research lab, and my most fulfilling job was being an oncology nurse for seven years.
