How to Prepare Garage Walls for Painting

I invite you to celebrate this milestone with me. This was my first video on my YouTube channel published on the same day that I created the channel on December 23, 2015.

History

We did not pay for a level 5 finish for our garage. When we had the house built there was an option to finish the garage with a level 5 drywall finish including paint. We chose not to finish the garage. The contractors apply a level 2 drywall finish, which is one coat with tape and also includes covering the drywall screw holes. Normally, this would require an additional fanned coat and a skim coat but I’m not concerned with a nice finish. I’m not worried about every inch of it either. There are places where the wires for the garage doors are run along the walls and I’m ignoring those areas.

Purpose

The purpose of this video is to demonstrate how to prepare garage walls for painting. I applied joint compound and feathered out along the joints so it was good enough. It doesn’t qualify as a level 3 but was as close as I cared to get.

Recommended Painting Tools and Supplies to Use for this job: https://amzn.to/3NLT34T

Preparation: Sanded the first coat down because the contractors didn’t care about being perfect and neither am I. It would be best to fan out the seams beyond 12 inches. I’m just going for a smooth finish since it is a garage. I’m working on the perimeter first then I’ll work on the ceiling. I went through a five gallon bucket of lightweight compound for the perimeter. I will need at least one more bucked for the ceiling.

Total Cost at the time of this video: $31 for two 5-gallon buckets of compound, leftover sanding screens from a previous project (not considering this cost) and $6 for respirators (not worth getting that stuff in lungs).

If you are interested in learning more about painting techniques you can see the “Picked out for you” article below: How to paint two tone colors with a laser level

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