Welcome back to Albany County Fasteners - Fasteners 101.
So today I'm going to show you how to paint these stairs. I have my paint here, which is Fortune 4 enamel paint.
This is latex water-based paint. You don't need to prime this wood. You can just buy the paint and put it on top.
Obviously, you just want to make sure it's a clean surface. I did clean everything down.
As long as the surface is clean you can apply the paint. I have a two and a half-inch brush here that I'm using.
Let's get rolling.
Starting from the top and working my way down.
Thank you. And a cup of coffee, of course, to make the job go easier.
Stairs can take time. You can do stairs in between the other projects. Walls like I'm doing here. I'm priming.
Another thing you want to do, which I didn't do yet, is mask the wall so you don't get any paint on it.
So I'm gonna do that right now. I'm gonna put masking tape on the wall so it's easier for me to paint.
So I'll just do this here.
Set my starter. I'm just going to bring that right to the edge.
And then you can finesse your way down.
This is pretty no-brainer type masking.
That's just basically whatever is going to stay.
Both sides.
Of course, I just put my arm in the paint. Painting is always so much fun.
It's good to have a rag around in case you need it.
Wipe these things up. Okay.
Continue on.
Now that I have taped it this will make the job go a lot faster and easier.
I'm going to go down the stringers first. These are called stringers, treads, risers.
So I'm going to do the stringers first and work my way from there.
So like I said: stringers, which are the sides, treads, which you step on, and risers.
We'll give this a couple coats. Gotta get the other side too.
The paint I selected for the stairs is the same gray that's on the wall. So anywhere it comes in contact with the wall it's going to look the same.
This is an eggshell finish so it's got a low sheen to it, not a high sheen.
I didn't want a high sheen on the stairs.
When you are working with paint, after you dip the paint, it's always good to start at the highpoint and work your way down to the low point.
So you'll see I didn't tape this out here because this part of the wall is painted gray.
It's not white. So I'm not worried about gray paint getting on there.
Okay. At this point, my stringers are done. I'm going to go back to the top. I'm gonna work my way down.
Starting with the top part of the nosing tread and then down to the risers and then treads, risers, treads, risers.
Then the first coat will be done and then we'll let it dry.
You always want to make sure you get underneath the tread. Get a nice glob of paint on there. Make it easier.
Even though there's a lot of corners of on stairs, it's pretty quick.
You don't have to really-you know these are garage stairs so you don't have to sand it or make them look so beautiful.
Ultimately, I may cover them with carpet but this will seal them up with a good sealer so they're not exposed.
You see I'm always cleaning the edge of the can. Otherwise, some paint builds up there, but you always want to be cleaning that edge.
This is going to dry really fast because the wood is just gonna absorb the paint.
First coat wood absorbs very quickly. This is an all pine stair. Yellow pine is what's used on here.
Sometimes they use Ponderosa. That's another species of pine.
You use a lot more paint in your first coat and you'll see each coat after that you use a lot less paint.
Basically starts to seal up all the pores and it gets faster in applying the paint.
If you're not sure what kind of paint to use on your application, go to your paint store and tell them what you are working on.
They'll give you exactly what you need.
Figure out the square footage of that area and give them that information.
Whatever the can says on coverage, it's usually never enough.
For whatever reason, when they tell you it's five hundred square feet in the can...
I don't know how they figure out those numbers because it never works out for me.
If you guys know, leave me a comment. Tell me how to get that square footage.
Most likely you're going to tell me to water it down and when you water it down too much you have to put more coats on.
That's the only way to stretch it.
Then you don't get good coverage and you got to give it another coat because you just don't have enough on there.
It doesn't cover and you can see through. It doesn't look uniform.
All right. Down to the end here. Looking good.
I just have a side to hit.
It's always good to have a process down when you're doing it.
Always start the same way as you're working your way down. If you do that, you won't miss anything.
I try to do that. Sometimes I get off course.
All right. So that's our stair. That's the first coat. I'll let it dry.
I can see from here there's a couple of spots I missed under there. We'll get that on the second round.
And hopefully, the second round will finish this. May have to go a third round.
We'll see how the stair absorbs the paint.