A couple of painting questions

[stephanier.1765]

I'm getting ready to paint a room that had previously been covered in wallpaper. The wallpaper was put up on builder grade paint so that a lot of wallboard came off with the paper. So after a lot of repairs, I'm ready to paint. Can I use paint that has primer already in it or should I use primer to ensure all the repairs are covered before I actually start using paint? Also, do I paint the baseboards and door before or after the walls? Thanks! 

Oh, I have a floor question too. I pulled up all the carpet so now I'm left with a concrete slab. What's the easiest flooring for someone who's never done flooring before to put down?

[kbutton]

When we've had sheetrock paper come off with wallpaper, we skim coated the walls with watered down joint compound and then sanded. Then we used a primer that says it will seal sheetrock.

LVP is easy to install, but not every kind locks the same way. If you will be doing it solo, make sure you have a kind that doesn't need a whole row locked together before it will lock into the previous row, or else it's going to be harder.

Most LVP can be installed and taken out in either direction, unlike older styles of floors. Make sure you get a kind that works that way, particularly if you are going to be doing it in more than one room all tied together. If you have doorways and such, watch a variety of videos to get a feel for different ways of measuring.

Make sure you know if you want your seams to be random or line up. Alternate planks from more than one box to avoid having runs of similar texture/print in clumps (if the room is big enough, you might still have that problem unless you lay out quite a few planks before cutting).

Some of the planking requires another layer and some has the layer integrated into it. If you get a separate layer, the stuff that folds up accordion style and has grids for cutting is much easier to handle.

[stephanier.1765]

5 minutes ago, kbutton said:

When we've had sheetrock paper come off with wallpaper, we skim coated the walls with watered down joint compound and then sanded. Then we used a primer that says it will seal sheetrock.

LVP is easy to install, but not every kind locks the same way. If you will be doing it solo, make sure you have a kind that doesn't need a whole row locked together before it will lock into the previous row, or else it's going to be harder.

Most LVP can be installed and taken out in either direction, unlike older styles of floors. Make sure you get a kind that works that way, particularly if you are going to be doing it in more than one room all tied together. If you have doorways and such, watch a variety of videos to get a feel for different ways of measuring.

Make sure you know if you want your seams to be random or line up. Alternate planks from more than one box to avoid having runs of similar texture/print in clumps (if the room is big enough, you might still have that problem unless you lay out quite a few planks before cutting).

Some of the planking requires another layer and some has the layer integrated into it. If you get a separate layer, the stuff that folds up accordion style and has grids for cutting is much easier to handle.

Do you have a particular brand of flooring you can recommend? Whenever, I look I get overwhelmed and give up. I don't want to this to be an overly expensive project but I don't want to get junk either and I'm having a hard discerning which ones are good and which ones are the junk.

[Pawz4me]

We've always had much much better results with a separate primer. The difference in how repairs show or not is huge.

I think the order in which you paint is mostly preference. We always do walls first.

Ditto LVP flooring, but I'm out of the loop on good brands that are easy to DIY.

[kbutton]

9 minutes ago, stephanier.1765 said:

Do you have a particular brand of flooring you can recommend? Whenever, I look I get overwhelmed and give up. I don't want to this to be an overly expensive project but I don't want to get junk either and I'm having a hard discerning which ones are good and which ones are the junk.

We've bought three different brands over time, and we've liked them all. You want thicker mil ratings (I think that's what it's called). We've gotten some from flooring stores, but one brand we did buy from Menard's. I think they had something that was like 16 mils. That's the lowest we've gone, and I think it's an odd rating--there is usually a gap between home use and light commercial mil ratings, and this flooring was in that gap both with ratings and with price, and it was really pretty. :-) 

https://www.hardwood-guys.com/single-post/wear-layer-vs-overall-thickness-of-lvp-why-it-s-important#:~:text=Mils%3A,from%206%20to%2028%20mils

A quick look at Menards shows that they have Tarkett with a light commercial mil rating. I don't think we've had their planks, but we've had loose lay vinyl from them that has excellent wear. Shaw is good--I think most of our floors are Shaw with a commercial rating. We installed Mohawk in a previous house, but that required us to put a whole row of planks in at the same time to lock properly. It was easy once we got going, but it absolutely required two people to do it. Both the Shaw and Mohawk came from a flooring store that passed along volume discounts to their customers--they do a lot of cash and carry business because they can't keep up with installs. The room we did with planks from Menards was really small, so we just needed a good sale from wherever.

I can't remember what friends installed, but they got something at Lowe's, and it went it really well (my son helped, and by then, he'd done at least two kinds of LVP, if not 3, and he's a quick study). 

 

[kbutton]

16 minutes ago, Pawz4me said:

I think the order in which you paint is mostly preference. We always do walls first.

Ditto for us. 

Sometimes with a good angled brush and steady hand, you can avoid taping a ton to do the trim. We bought plastic painting shields that we could slide along the baseboard, and it helped a great deal the floor side--less so with the wall side.