How to Spray a Planked Ceiling

Last weekend, we finished painting the ceiling in the great room of our house – the dining room, living room and two loft areas. It’s something that we that we’ve thought about since we bought the house and have planned for the past year or so. If you missed why we decided to paint, see here and here (before photos in the link and at the bottom of the post)

After a lot of trial and error – the game changers were Kilz stain blocking primer and the right sprayer set up. Read on to see how we did it!

We painting our entry and primed our living room – no post because both experiences were extremely painful!

Today, I’m so happy to share what worked for us – even though this room was a lot larger, it was bearable because 1. We were prepared 2. We had the right materials 3. We learned from our previous mistakes!

First, spraying versus rolling. Spraying sounds a lot easier since the process is lot quicker. But, it’s A LOT more set up and in general it’s a pain. The paint gets everywhere, so you have to seal and protect everything, including the house and yourself (unless you want to be covered in paint) and it’s super hot in the suit! We sprayed our ceiling because rolling alone can’t get in the crevices between the planks. Spraying ensured even coverage.

We taped off our walls to prevent the overspray from building up on the walls. Since we will be painting the walls white too, we might have been able to get away with holding a shield up (on the walls) as we went, but to be safe, we applied plastic to all the walls (definitely don’t want to sand all the walls ..)

Here’s our process. First, we vacuumed the wood the best we could. Next, we sprayed the ceiling, then we rolled/brushed all of the beams (the wood on the beams is rough, and the spray wouldn’t get in all the crevices, so areas looked dark), caulked the seams where the beams met the ceiling, sprayed another coat of primer, sprayed a top ceiling coat. In between coats, we looked for drips (it’s easy to do if the paint is applied too heavily)

Sounds fun? No, not really. But, after getting a few quotes around $14,000 for this room and the bedroom, we decided to give it a try ourselves. It was bearable and basically stress free, because we took our time to research, get the right materials, and spread it out over a few weeks.

Most importantly, a good, stain blocking primer and paint sprayer. Both functioned exactly as planned!

The wood in our house needed a good, stain blocking primer. Typically, oil based is the way to go. But since we’re living here while we paint, the oil based would have been unbearable. It’s a pain to clean up and it STINKS.

We used Kilz Premium Stain High Hide Stain Blocking Primer in our entry and living room – both times, it covered well with two coats and a year later, there is no bleed through. So, I reached out to Kilz and decided to try Kilz Max in our great room – it’s low VOC and covered so well! I didn’t notice a huge difference in coverage, compared to Kilz Premium Stain High Hide Stain Blocking Primer (zero VOC), so I’d recommend either one.

Next, having a good sprayer will save a lot of headaches. We rented a Graco sprayer from Home Depot for the living room, but decided to buy one since we’d need it for several days. Plus, we will be painting the rest of the interior and the exterior of our house soon, so buying was definitely worth it for us.

When we painted the living room, the problem was that the tip was on the larger side of the recommend range for the primer. Which resulted on lots of paint coming out .. it made a huge mess and wasted paint. I think we used 7 gallons in the living room and about 10 gallons in the great room (which included another coat in the living room too). The great room is at least 5 times larger, so having a smaller tip the second time was definitely worth it! We’d recommend using the smaller tip recommended for your primer. We used the tip that came with the sprayer, .015″ You can use .015″ – .021″ with the Kilz primers listed above. I would definitely recommend using the smallest tip recommended for the primer!! We didn’t dilute the paint and it worked perfectly.

Here are our must have supplies when spray painting!