Painting a Room One Wall at a Time

[mera]

My husband and I are getting ready to paint our large family room.  I think the dimensions are 20 x 11.  We are planning on using the Behr Sparrow color.  We used this for a smaller room and it took two coats to finish the room.  We are basically expecting it to take a full day to paint the room, but with summer getting busy it may take a few weeks before we actually have a day that we can set aside.  My husband wants to start painting one wall at a time so we can work on it in the evenings after work and get it done sooner.  We would buy all the paint up front, so there shouldn't be any color matching issues, but this still makes me nervous.  Does anyone have experience doing this?  What kind of trouble can we run into if we only paint one wall at a time?  I appreciate any advice you can give me! 

[kaylie]

Honestly the prep work/clean up is always what takes me the longest, so I would rather just wait and pound it all out at once. As long as you do the edging and painting while everything is still wet on that wall, it should be fine. Just don't cut in one day and then go back over with a roller a different day.

[auntie]

The concept of painting a room over a period of a few weeks holds no appeal for me at all. It would be a bit like breaking a 6 hour road trip into a series of one hour drives? Why? I'd tell him put on his big boy pants and push through the weekend and be done.

As kaylie points out, the prep, set up and clean up take a big chunk of the time spent painting making this a pretty inefficient way to paint. Plus, if you paint one wall at a time, you'll not be able to maintain and work from a wet edge.

Buying all the paint at once doesn't guarantee color matching, that's best done by blocking your paint anytime you need more than one gallon. 

[Deleted]

There's no harm in it as long as you finish the entire wall.
It took me a couple days to paint our mudroom but I had a baby, my grandmother died and like 8 other things happened. It was so unfun and the mess drove me nuts. It looks fine and no one knows it took me like 2 weeks to get through though.
That said, I agree with the pp. Do the prep work one night. Leave it if you have to but paint at least one coat all in a day. The mess and paint cans around will make you nuts otherwise.

[Susie]

No way, that's crazy.  You'd waste so much time edging corners neatly!  It's not that hard to find one day to bang it out.  Are you going to leave the room covered in drop cloths and furniture all moved for days, with rollers and brushes in the fridge, and paint roller trays full of paint?  No thanks!

[auntie]

Jun 22, 2013 9:42:15 GMT -5 nursecramer said:

You use 2-3 evenings prepping after work, taping, moving furniture, removing outlet plates, etc. Our family room is 25x12 and I painted it a couple weeks ago doing exactly that. I sponged on two coats and the actual painting took about 2 hours each coat. It would've gone faster if it was two of us and if we had used rollers.

That's what I did when I painted my great room which is 28' x 15' x 9'. I painted the trim day one and two (major crown, fireplace, chair rail and ogee) waited almost a week, taped one evening and did the two coats of wall paint with rollers the next day.

[mera]

Thanks for all the feedback! I kind of thought one wall at a time sounded like more work, but was having a hard time explaining it.