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I'm working on prepping a small house and the entire interior needs paint. I'm typically a roller and brush type guy, but I have done HVLP cabinet spraying in the past. A friend told me he uses a Graco sprayer and loves it and it speeds up the job, other than the 15 minutes it takes to clean and a little extra wasted paint.

Just your standard plaster/sheetrock type walls, no texture other than light roller nap texture from the past paint.

The place needs walls, ceilings, and trim primed and painted. Is a sprayer something I should consider to help things along? I realize it takes lots of masking and extra work, but the speed benefit of spraying seems like it may be worth it in this case of doing an entire home. The wood floors will also be refinished so I would put down brown paper covering but if there is a little mess it won't be as crucial since its being refinished.

We may paint everything one color, and then only accent a wall or two so I could easily just roll those walls if needed if the sprayer is too much setup/clean up for a few small walls.

In the future I may want to paint the exterior of the house so that got me thinking a sprayer may be a decent investment.

Should I consider a sprayer like a Graco X5 or X7 to help get the job done?

RocketManZ
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  • Besides the spray getting on everything, think doing walls with a sprayer takes practice to do well. – crip659 Sep 08 '22 at 13:41
  • @crip659 Yeah, there's a technique to it, but backrolling will cover a multitude of sins. – George Anderson Sep 08 '22 at 13:42
  • Did not know about the backrolling. Only done some spraying outdoors where coverage was not important. The ads do make it look so easy but they are not using first timers in the ads. – crip659 Sep 08 '22 at 13:46
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    I'm going to move my comments to an answer. I think it's decent advice. – George Anderson Sep 08 '22 at 13:59
  • Pretty close to a duplicate: https://diy.stackexchange.com/a/62596/18078 – Ecnerwal Sep 08 '22 at 14:06
  • Should you _consider_ it? Well, yes, of course, consider all your options. Should you choose to go with it, well, that depends on whether or not _you_ think it's worth the hassle in the trade off for speed. – FreeMan Sep 08 '22 at 14:21
  • If you're painting a house, I recommend getting the 3M Masking Tool. Masking is the bigger pain than actually painting, and so tooling up for that portion of the job really helps. – Smith Sep 09 '22 at 16:12

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When I've had to do large areas, l usually rented a paint sprayer. You can get a pretty good one at a decent rate in most places. Good ones are expensive and for a tool I would use only every few years, it's better to rent IMHO.

I do all the prep work, patching, taping, etc. BEFORE I rent the sprayer. Some ppl like to backroll after spraying (take 2 ppl, one to spray, the other to backroll before it dries), but backrolling is a LOT faster bc the sprayer laid down the paint. I personally don't backroll, usually, but some do. Up to you of course.

If when spraying, you get it too thick in places or to thin, backrolling will even it out. The biggest mistake people make spraying is moving the spray head in an "arc" manner which varies the distance from the spray head to the surface. A few things: It's important to keep the spray head the same distance from the surface, that doesn't come naturally, but it can be learned. Next: Keep the motion constant, don't slow down or speed up. And always see if your getting good coverage and adjust your distance or speed accordingly.

George Anderson
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  • what kind of mask/breather did you use? – P2000 Sep 08 '22 at 14:24
  • Solid advice and some great tips and insight you share here, thanks for this. Good idea to possibly just rent the machine and do the job one time vs. purchasing it. I'm going to consider all options. Only reason I may buy one over renting is if I need to do the paint work in stages and plan to need it in multiple sessions. Years back I decided to paint my kitchen cabinets so I bought a nice HVLP sprayer and learned the technique and all. That was my first true experience with a sprayer and the results were fantastic after I got the hang of it. Many years later they still look great. – RocketManZ Sep 09 '22 at 01:42