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painting interior walls of garage with no drywall ??

14 years ago

i'm dying to see if anyone has done this. we're getting ready to fix up our 1920's garage and i'm thinking i'd prefer to just have the wood stud walls painted white the way they are and skip the drywall. is this crazy? has anyone done or seen this? the walls are wood beams with some black paper in between. i'm thinking of having my painter prime and paint with the sprayer for a cottage-y, industrial look.

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Comments (5)

kimcoco
14 years ago
LOL. We also live in a 1920's home, with a detached unfinished garage. It looks so drab though, so I was planning on painting mine this spring. We purchased a Wagner sprayer at Home Depot so we could do it ourselves.

We keep a lot of our belongings in the garage, and use the alcoves between the beams for storage of our garden tools among other things, so I opted not to drywall. I too love the industrial look.

Are you planning on going with a high gloss finish for ease of maintenance? I was debating myself, but I'm definitely using an exterior paint.

When you finish your project, please post pics. I'd love to see it before I tackle my own this spring.
t_finan
14 years ago
This is a 3 car detached that took 2 professional painters 6 days to complete, including properly preparing the floor for expoxy painting.

The prime coat was rolled on for the walls. They needed to spray the inside roof boards since the nails were tearing up their rollers. They also masked the windows and hardware and painted the back of the on the 3 rollup garage doors.

I don't recall the type of prime and paints that were used.

There were two bare bulbs lighting the garage to start. I've since added three of the cheapy 4 ft shop lights from Depot. They happen to have electronic ballast and light quickly even with the econ bulbs that fit those units.
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Sure looks attached on those plans. A layer of drywall has been used between houses and garages for a very long time as an 'expedient' (if not an actual) firewall. You can put additional material (like headboard) on the drywall to protect it, but a layer of bead-board (or thin wood or plywood) may not satisfy the AHJ. Even the attic space of garages is normally required to be isolated from the attic space of an attached house. You will just have to excuse the AHJ, they are trying to keep you alive in case your car starts a fire in your garage, or is left running for more tan a few minutes filling the garage with CO. This post was edited by brickeyee on Wed, Jun 19, 13 at 13:03
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The unpainted garages I have seen have had the basic mudding done between the drywall boards and the nails have been quickly covered over with drywall mud (that's the spackle you are seeing). Based on estimate I have gotten from painters, yes, there is $1000 worth of work to do this at near to the quality level of the inside of your house. I don't know what level of perfection you want, but you should be able to get someone in to just spray paint two coats of paint (or one coat primer and one coat paint) onto the walls and ceiling for less than $1000. My gut feeling is that it's not going to take 10 gallons to cover it. You could save a lot of money if you did it yourself with a roller. If you have never painted before, this would be a great project to start with.
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If you're not going to paint all of the walls white, as saypoint mentions, I would do the upper half white and the bottom half grey. This is what our basement laundry room in the prewar apartment building I grew up in had; the top half was maximized for brightness and the bottom half was maximized to conceal scuffs, dings, etc. I believe the shade was the usual "battleship grey" : ) .
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Personally, I wouldn't bother. They'll just find other nooks and crannies. As far as spraying with pesticides repeatedly, which is what you would need to do, I avoid such practices as much as possible. I'm not an environmental nut, but the idea of regularly spraying what is essentially poison in my house to remedy a minor nuisance seems very short-sighted. It's the proverbial attempt to kill a mosquito by firing a cannon at it...
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kimcoco
14 years ago
That looks great. I'm wondering why they rolled the walls with primer rather than spray. My paint store told me that I'd be using waaaaayyy too much primer to prime exposed beams in basement or garage by brushing or rolling it on, they recommended that we spray. I suppose they needed proper ventilation perhaps.

What type of finish is it? Flat, semi gloss, ? it's hard to tell from pics.
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t_finan
14 years ago
Primer used was Benjamin Moore Fresh Start Alkyd Exterior Quick Dry Primer. The label indicates that it resists tannin bleed through of redwood and cedar. I assume it was rolled on for coverage. I can see some bleed through on the ceiling that was sprayed.
joe_mn
14 years ago
i had forgotten it was common to build garages with no sheathing. wood siding lets you do that. new construction has brown board and vinyl siding. don't see much interior painting on those houses. of course the house side is sheetrocked for fireproofing.
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