How to Paint a New Construction Home Interior | Start to Finish Guide for Painters & Contractors

All right, this lesson I'm going to be talking about what to paint first. Now, if you've never done a new construction job before and this is unfamiliar to you, I'm going to just I'll talk about a basic new construction package like this package right here. You you can run into all different types of scenarios, but we'll go over a basic package and then hit a few scenarios. And the basic package uh what to paint first. We go we PVA prime walls if the builder uh is requiring walls to be primed. And even if they're not requiring it to be primed, you really should be priming your walls. You see, all these walls are pure white. They're not finished. They're actually primed. And that's what typically a garage like this garage will be painted with just PVA primer. And probably most garages are just left with the primer cuz it's a nice clean white flat finish. So, you're going to uh walk in here and typically um the drywallers finish. They do everything. They do their texture, sand, clean everything, and then uh before the carpenters come in, this is your opportunity to prime walls fast and easy where all you got to do is mass glass. You don't have to worry about woodwork, anything. There's no closet packs in, no window sills, there's no doors installed. I just walk through here, literally shoot this thing like super fast. So, the priming is super easy, super quick. Now, uh carpenters come in, carpet is beginning, they they install your door jambs, they install baseboards where carpet's going to be. I had some people ask me just the other day on some of my videos, you know, there's no baseboards in some of the room, there's no baseboards. There is baseboards in some rooms. Wherever they install carpet, they always install baseboards first cuz the carpet tucks underneath the baseboard. Wherever there's like tile, LVP, stuff like that. Baseboards are installed afterwards cuz you want the baseboard to sit on top of those that flooring cuz it looks nicer instead of trying to get cuts buted up against your baseboards. Um, which does not look good. So, where there's baseboards um and stuff, that's where the carpet is going to be. So once everything's installed, we come in, we begin prepping all the trim work, and we begin painting trim work. And typically the first thing when it comes to trim work, like all the doors are installed, we take all the doors off, we paint all the doors, we move them out to the garage, get them out of the way, get them in a protected space where they're not going to get overspray, dust. You want a big nice clean open environment to be painting your trim at. After our trim is painted and dried, we're going to mask all that off. You're going to see how we mask trim off fast and easy with 9x400 plastic, you know, and paper. We'll mask our trim off and then we'll spray our walls and ceilings all one color. New construction is very typical. Walls and ceilings one color because it's fast, it's easy, it's less expensive. It doesn't The painter is going to charge you more if there's different colors everywhere. If the ceilings different than the walls, etc. It increases the price of the house. The the builders are trying to typically keep it down when they're doing spec builds. They may have customer involved that's saying, "Well, I want colors everywhere." So, that will change things. But most new construction homes we do, walls and ceilings one color. This one times are changing. It used to be ceilings were white, walls were um all one color. And that was like a trend that is kind of like moving away to going back to all one color. We'll be doing a room upstairs, a pink room. I asked the customer, "Is the ceiling going to be pink?" They're like, "Yeah." And I'm like, "That's interesting." So, that's what it would look like. Um, stereotypical new construction, PV prime walls, trim installed, paint doors, get doors out of the way, paint trim, mass trim off, and then paint your walls and ceilings one color. Now, if you were painting ceilings a different color than walls, that might be one scenario you'll run into. What we typically do is we spray all of our walls, get overspray up onto the ceilings, and then we mask the walls and drop plastic all the way down to the bottom. because you can mask drop plastic. We'll spray our ceilings, pull our plastic, and then our ceilings are a different color than the walls. That's the next, you know, uh, kind of most common scenario. Some people might say, "Why not do the ceilings last?" You know, or do the ceilings first? If you do the ceilings first and then you're masking to spray the walls, you have to mask upside down, pull your plastic way out. It's way more difficult to do the opposite scenario. So, that's kind of what we paint first. There's um might be other scenarios, an accent wall going someplace where you have to mask off and roll an accent wall, but stereotypical new construction. That's what it looks like. What to paint first. All right. So, today we're in this new construction house. We're beginning the process now. The drywallers are all finished. Came through, did the dry the texturing, did the sanding, uh touch-ups. They even um vacuumed and mopped the walls, which a lot of uh drywallers do not. This builder that we're working for, he does. So, I'm very thankful. We came in, got a pretty dang clean slate. They had paper down on the floors, pulled all the paper, so you don't have drywall mud everywhere. I've seen it just where drywall muds all over the floors. You got to scrape the floors, everything. So, we're beginning the process. I rubbed my hand over the wall and there wasn't very much uh like a dust, you know, the sanding dust on the wall from the the mud itself and it appeared like they did mop it, but we're just going over it. Just it doesn't take very long. This is a two-story house, 2600 ft², I believe, somewhere in that range. The mopping will happen in probably 45 minutes to an hour at the most. So, Noah's, you know, he's already gone through this room, mopped it. Now, I'm going to go back behind him and begin the vacuuming process. So, we're mopping the walls, knocking down any loose drywall dust, cuz if you don't, that's going to cause an adhesion problem with the paint sticking to that dust. Of course, you can't get every bit of dust off, but that's what the PVA primer is. It's um helps that dust. It helps seal the rock. It helps seal, you know, so you get a nice good even top coat finish. But it is important to vacuum. If you don't vacuum, you're going to start kicking up dust on your freshly painted walls. You're going to get dust coming off window sills and everywhere. So, you vacuum. So, we begin mopping. And then I'll just start vacuuming um what's up top and work my day down to the bottom. So high window sills, I like to just vacuum the whole window. Try to vacuum out the track the the window itself. Get anything off. Even though it's going to be mass, I just like a clean surface. So we'll vacuum that. Like just using just uh like one of these type of ends right here that kind of brushes it off. Also windows, window sills. Then we'll get down to the floor. Start vacuuming the floor. You don't want anything kicking up from the floor, especially around all the corners. Technically, I guess you can, you know, you only really need to vacuum a few feet out. You know, it doesn't take much longer. I like to just vacuum the whole entire floor. So, you'll see us doing that. This is the the fitting I use. I want it to go tightly down to the uh subfloor right there, so it vacuums and gets everything out. Also, the um the vents, the vents don't have covers on them. The one vent right down here had a lot of drywall mud down in there. Sandy mud down there. I just take this tip, stick it down there, vacuum out of that because you just never know if anything's going to be kicking up if the air turns on. Typically, while you're painting, you're going to have the air off even while you're mopping everything. Shouldn't have any air on, but you want to just vacuum that down there cuz the worst thing is to get your trim painted or your walls painted and the air comes on and it just kicks up, you know, a bunch of dust onto wet paint. vacuum be vacuum out light switch uh light switches outlets. We'll be vacuuming those out, too. Just hit it with either one of these nozzles. Once we get this all cleaned up, we're going to begin the prepping of the windows and caulking the windows process, getting it ready to spray. So, it's very important to get it all clean, ready to go before you do any painting. [Music] All right, I'm upstairs. We're getting ready to prep the upper portion of this house. I'm going to show you what mopping the walls looks like up here. So, um, we're going to be mopping, vacuuming, uh, covering outlets, uh, getting the windows ready to be prepped and cocked. So, the mopping itself, if you've never seen a mop, or if you don't understand what mopping is, this is a mop. It's just a simple mop that you would mop a floor with. And all you're doing is just knocking down the dust off the wall that was created by sanding. You're just knocking the bulk of it down to the ground. And then you're going to be vacuuming that up. It's a very simple process. You're not scrubbing the wall. You're just kind of lightly going over it with your mop to knock everything down. We don't mop the ceilings. We just mop the walls themselves. And I'm just gonna go up and down. You can kind of see it just knocking down some dust off the walls. And this is what mopping your walls is. Just like this. Just going to go around mop the whole entire thing. And then then we'll begin the vacuuming process. You don't want to, you know, vacuum and then mop obviously cuz then you're just putting a lot of dust and dirt down onto the floor after you've already vacuumed it. But that's what mopping the walls is with a mop and new construction. Heat. Heat. [Music] All right, up here we're going to give you a look at masking a window. So, this is what quite a few of the windows look like, you know, in this new construction house. Uh there's nothing right here but um a 2x6 and um cut drywall cuz there's going to be a wood window sill put on there. So we've got a drywall uh three-sided. I'm going to be masking. I always take and put you know 1 in on my hand masker cuz it releases a lot easier when you're pulling it off versus inch and a half. I got my tough gaff with me cuz this is what I tack the sides with and mask the sides and bottom with using frog tape. uh blue. This is um their blue painters tape right here. 14-day release, you know, because um the the tape's going to stay on here sometimes multiple days. And so you don't want to use a production tape on here if you're going to be leaving, you know, the tape on there, especially if it's going to be on there for more than 3 days. Frog tape orange, you know, their prograde production tape that's got a three-day release. And if it's going to be on there for more to me more than a day, I typically am going to be going with blue uh as my um tape to mask windows off. So, this how it's done. M3000 hand masker. Just going to get it up here. Pull it out. Get it about a/ inch from the window right there. I'm just going to tack it up. I'm trying to leave some of my caulking exposed. Caulking should always be painted. Otherwise, it's going to collect dust and dirt over time. When I get close to the end, I'm kind of going to estimate where I need to tear it and then tear it off, put my masker either in my back pocket or on my ladder. Going to run finger across it to get it to hold stick. Get a good seal. Going to pull the sides down. While I'm on my ladder, I'm going to take and tack my sides. I'm gonna bring it down tight. Tack one side. I'm going to bring it down tight on the other side. Get off my ladder. Now, I'm going to tack this side. Going to try to take a sharp point of my tape right here. Stick it up in the corner. Make a nice corner. Come down the sides. Press it down. If I don't have a straight edge, tear another piece off right here. Get a nice corner. Just like that. The windows long enough. You got to move your ladder. I'm going to move it. Get my sharp corner up and to the corner. Bring it back down to where I tacked it. If it runs up onto the drywall, I just pull it away. Tear another sharp corner. Stick it up in there. Make sure I have a nice corner. Brush my sides down. Make sure I got a good seal on the edge and the plastic. Going to pull my plastic all the way down like this. Now I'm going to begin masking down the side. If I need to get it, pull it over so I get a good seal. Go all the way down the window. Little bit extra onto the wood. All the way down. If you don't get a a good clean line, just take your masking, pull a little bit more, straighten that line up. Make sure you got a good seal. say, you can see right here, I don't have a good seal. If it's not sealed, you got any holes, I'm just going to go back and just put an extra piece on there and seal that. The last thing you want to do is get overspray on your windows. I'm going to roll this up to where I get my clean wood exposed cuz when I'm spraying this, I don't want this flipping up and overspray getting on my windows. I'm going to tack this down all the way across here. Make sure my corners are all tight. Run my masking down. Just got a splinter like that's why I wear gloves except when I mask. So, there we go. We've got my window pulled tight. Make sure you know nothing, no leaks. You know, if there was a hole or something from your masker right there, the blade put a little hole right there that could cause a leak. All this is sealed good. There we go. We got nice sharp corners. Our window is all masked. [Music] So, when masking, there's a couple options. You know, you could tear your tape, you know, to get um sharp corners or just take a longer piece of tape, run it over, you know, where you're going to be masking so it extends beyond like that. And then I'll just trim it with my knife. So, I just overrun it just like this. Then, I'm going to get my two-edge knife out and I'm going to trim that corner real quick. to be straight. Just like that. Take my knife. Make sure you got a nice sharp blade starting the day so you can cut your tape. Just like that. So, these are full wrap windows here. They don't have window sill on them. Sometimes they're full wrap drywall, not full wrap trim. So, I've got to mask off the whole bino window. So, I tore my mask in a little bit too far. I'm going to flip it, fold it, tack it like that. It's okay if you pull it too far. kind of in a difficult situation with this stairwell here. Hard to work with angle my ladder and everything. So, so you have a couple options. You could actually, you know, trim all this excess off or just roll it up. If you trim it, then you kind of got plastic floating, you know, all over the place. So, I like to just roll it up. All right. In this uh video, I'm going to be talking about uh back rolling. And I know that might be a question or topic that would come up when uh when I'm doing the priming and stuff. So, you know, we'll talk a little bit about, you know, just back rolling in general. So, back rolling enhances penetration and enhances adhesion on a porous surface. So, a surface like glass, you know, glass is non-porous. It's very slick and stuff. And so if you were to like say a smooth metal door, a piece of glass, you spray some paint on there, back rolling it is not going to, you know, help you out when it comes to uh pushing the product into a porous surface or enhancing the penetration or adhesion. But if you're doing like um like rough saw wood uh T111 siding anything that's porous drywall you know back rolling could uh be beneficial to enhance you know penetration and adhesion. So now um the subject is you know when I'm doing you know an interior new construction you know house do I need to back roll the walls? So down here this scenario we've got a texture on here. This is Sun Valley texture. It's what we call Sun Valley here in Idaho, Treasure Valley. Some people call it skip trrow. Some people might call it something else. And where you can see white is the topping or mud skimmed over the drywall and right over the drywall paper and where it was taped, which the paper is the gray. So you have kind of like these smooth voids. So predominantly this wall is a really smooth wall. When they're when they're eventually painted, they're super smooth. you rub your run your hands down there, you can just lightly see these voids, but it's kind of like a level five finish with just some voids in it. It's a really cool looking texture. So, the question is, you know, should I back roll this, you know, to enhance the penetration of the primer when you spray it on there? Now, the primer I'm actually using is a PVA primer, which is a polyvinyl acetate primer. It's designed to be sprayed right over drywall topping and mud and over drywall and and it's kind of a thin primer product that's you know intended to just absorb right in soak and seal the rock and the drywall and um the topping or the mud and seal it so you get an even finish you know as a top coat. It's not designed to back roll. So what would happen if you back rolled this wall you know because your thought process hey I need to you know enhance penetration or you know make touchups for the homeowner or for me as this you know house gets you know progresses flooring gets installed cabinets gets installed people nicking and dinging the walls if I was to take and spray this and back roll it the the primer is not designed to be back rolled and so it's going to what we call stipple really bad so it's going to take a smooth finish and now add stippling to it. And that in itself is going to probably for you know in our area a lot the homeowners, the builders, they're not going to like it cuz they're expecting a smooth Sun Valley texture or skip trout finish. And back rolling the primer isn't beneficial to you at all either cuz you're going to be top coating over that primer. When you're spraying your top coat, you're going to be atomizing the paint, which actually changes the sheen and changes the color, you know, slightly through the atomization and the crushing of the paint going through the airless tip. And so, that in itself means that you um you're still going to have touch-up problems. So, if you were actually going to back roll anything, you would spray your PVA primer on, which is designed to be sprayed and not back rolled. Then you would spray and back roll your top coat on there that's going over the top of your primer. And um that way, you know, if you were to get a nick in the middle of this wall right here and you touched it up with a brush, it's not a sprayed on finish. And so it's more likely going to match and not leave, you know, a spot on the wall that has a different color or a different sheen doing the touchup. So, it there's, you know, a time and a place for everything. I would say also, you know, um, you know, you would only want to be back rolling if you're using a paint that is designed to back roll. Now, most contractor grade paints that we're using in new construction aren't really designed to back roll. They're they're less expensive. They don't have flow and leveling agents in them. So when you back roll them over the top of your primer, it doesn't flow and level and smooth out. So it's going to stipple it. So if you stipple your primer and then you spray on a top coat on top of that and you back roll that, now you've even added more stippling and more texture to your wall, which is not desirable. So, if I had any like option, if I wanted to back roll because I wanted to make touch-ups easier for me, touch-ups easier for the customer going down the road and I wanted to back roll, I would spray my PVA primer on, and then…