How Not to Apply Interior Primer

You can learn a lot from my mistakes. With each wall, I corrected my previous missteps when I applied the primer. Maybe this guide can help you from making the same mistakes that I did.

How Not to Apply Interior Primer

Here are the mistakes I made when priming walls for painting.

Not Using Enough

 Primer

When you apply a latex primer to walls, you should not be able to see through it. I had only used primer once before and somehow thought that a see-through coat would be enough. The cover I was painting over was lighter than my final paint color, so I figured it was okay. I was quickly corrected when the man of the house looked at the walls in that first room.

Not Mixing the Paint Enough

Guilty. I admit that I was impatient and anxious to get started on applying the primer. The sooner the primer was up, the sooner I could color the walls with my selected Behr paint colors. The only problem is that I did not remove the entire cover before I stirred the primer. I untwisted the little cap and stirred it with a stick.

The primer seemed pretty thin and slightly watery, which resulted in my see-through walls.

Not Using a Fan

I learned this the first time I applied primer to a small space. Even with an open window and frequent breaks, a fan is needed to keep air flow moving through the painting space. This time around, I used a primer which had a much less toxic odor than the primer in my previous project. I still needed the fan to keep the air moving and make the primer tolerable.

Applying Too Much Primer with the Brush

I use a brush to edge out the corners and spaces between walls and ceiling and between windows and walls. A few times I used too much primer and left drips of paint. The drips of primer are not bad if you notice them right away and roll them out. However, the primer was drying fast and I have obvious drip marks that I may have to scrape down and re-prime.

Using a Wet Roller

This will only happen to you the second time you use your paint roller. Unless you are going to use a brand new roller each time you start a painting session, you will need to thoroughly remove the primer from the paint roller.