Painting a Room using Benjamin Moore’s Aura Interior Paint
By Mark J. Donovan
My wife and I recently painted a room that had dark paint on the lower half
of the walls. The walls were divided by a wallpaper border. The lower half
of the walls was a dark red, and the upper half of the walls was a light
beige color. Hiding dark paint can normally be a challenge if you intend to
paint the walls a much lighter color, which was the situation in our case.
Often you find yourself priming the walls first with a light primer and then
applying two coats of paint over it.
We decided however on this
project to skip the primer stage and go directly to the paint stage solely
using Benjamin Moore’s Aura interior paint. This particular type of paint is
very expensive. However its high cost is mitigated by the fact that you
don’t have to buy paint primer nor do you have to spend time applying it to
the walls.
To paint the room we first removed all the wall hangings from the room, as
well as some of the furniture. We then removed all the nails and patched the
walls with spackling, and then lightly sanded over the patches. In addition,
we removed all the electrical outlet and switch covers.
Next, we removed the wallpaper
border. This took a few days, working only an hour or so each day. Removing the
wall paper border involved wetting it down with a water spray bottle and then
peeling it off with a 3 inch wide drywall taping knife.
After removing the wallpaper border
and applying masking tape around the doors, windows, and baseboard trim, we
began the actual task of painting the room. Per the directions from the sales
person who sold us the Benjamin Moore Aura paint, we first did our cutting along
the trim and wall / ceiling edges.
According to the sales person,
only one coat of cutting is required with this type of paint. He was
basically correct, however we chose to apply one more coat of cutting along
the four corners of the room on the lower half of the walls where the dark
paint was.
After completing the cutting we used a 9 inch roller
with a very thin, 3/16 inch thick, nap to paint the room walls. Unlike
other types of paint, Benjamin Moore’s Aura interior paint dries very
quickly. Consequently we rolled the paint onto the walls in pretty much
an up and down motion, versus using the standard W or M motion. We also
moved quickly to make sure we did not go over the same painted area too
many times with the roller. Somewhat to our surprise one coat of paint
did a very effective job of hiding the dark paint on the lower half of
the walls.
Photo by Mark Donovan
After applying the first coat of paint to the room, we let it dry for one
hour before applying the second coat. As already mentioned, we only applied
a second coat of cutting in the 4 vertical corners of the room to ensure
that we fully and evenly masked out the old dark paint on the bottom half of
the walls.
After letting the second coat of paint dry for an hour we removed the
masking tape, reattached the electrical cover plates, re-mounted the wall
hangings and moved the furniture back into the room.
Without a doubt, painting a room using Benjamin Moore’s Aura interior paint
was an excellent decision. The room turned out great and we saved a lot of
time. In one day we had completely painted the room and returned it back to
its finished look.
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