Hello,
I am owner building my home and I plan on doing the painting and trim work. I’ve been doing cabinetry as a hobby for 3 years so I’m confident with the wood working and hand applied stain and finishing. However with this, in order to get a more consistant stain and finish, i plan to use a sprayer. My question is, what should be the correct process? Should i paint, stain and finish the trim, then istall it or would another process be better?
Thanks,
DP
Replies
I would suggest doing all the painting first. For base moldings, chair rail, door casing etc. my company always stains and prefinishes before installation. We use either Guardian or Sherwin Williams brand stain, sanding sealer, and moistue resistant lacquer, these products are solvent based and are designed for professional application, they give excellent results. Be sure to use a good quality spray gun, We use a Devilibuss spray gun and it gives great results. Also a HVLP(High Volume Low Pressure) sprayer can also give you an excellent finish. If your using oak for your molding, the sanding sealer step is mandatory. I would reccommend prefinishing as much of the wood work as possible.
With the molding, do you cut it to size prior to stain and finish or do you simply take all the materials stain & finish, and then cut and install.
<We use either Guardian or Sherwin Williams brand stain, sanding sealer, and moistue resistant lacquer,>
Can you elaborate more on the stain. Is it a pigment stain, gel, waterbased, oil based, or dye?
Thanks,
David
The Sherwin Williams and Guardian stains are oil based. While I like to use the oil base stains I would not want to knock the gel, or water based products, I understand that you can get great results with them.
Once you decide on the type of stain to use I would recommend that you use the manufacture's "system". By "system" I mean, use Sherwin Williams stain, sanding sealer lacquer and lacquer thinner. Why? Because these products are engineered to work together, to give you the best results.
We do not precut moldings before staining, if you choose to do so be extra carefull that you don't spray lacquer or whatever sealer you choose on the raw edge of the molding, it could prevent a tight fit. My company always adds an additional 10% to the amount of molding we pre stain, this allows for mistakes or miscalculations on the amount of moldings that we need.
I hope this information is helpful, don't hesitat to contact me if I can be of additional assistance. Good Luck.
Do you also subscribe/go to Fine Wood Working . They can help there too, they just did an article on hand applied stain/finish
We use water based Sherwin Williams in a HVLP gun when we need to , but we sub most of that stuff out if we can
I'm going to disagree with the previous. Fairly strongly, though I suspect that is irrelevant. I would suggest (and explain why) you install all your trim prior to any painting. Once it's on the wall you have the opportunity to fine tune anything that didn't line up just perfect. Bravado aside, even the best trimmers get miffed when that 90 degree base corner gets a little lick sticking out - whether the fault of the saw, the operator, the framing . . . all the tiny details, any seams, you can use your files, sanders, whatever to fine tune so they disappear as much as possible.
When you stain, the oil base is fine. When spraying, I have come to prefer the Xylene base that SW sells in the Sherwood line. You do have to stir the can thoroughly, but it colors very evenly, even where you run into woods that are prone to blotch (and when is the last time you got windows shipped with maple jambs?) and it dries very quickly, which is an asset to me in an environment where you're running around dragging a hose behind you. Not so quickly you don't have time to shoot a room and run over the whole thing with a rag to avoid drips though.
Then lacquer your trim. What you use is up to you. If I were in a new and unoccupied home, I think I'd still go with a solvent based lacquer, though in remodels I've stuck with water based (SW Kem Aqua) and been really really happy with the end result. The water based takes a little more time, but not running a homeowner out on account of fumes for two days is worth that, easily. When your lacquer is dry, mask and paint.
Why? If you prefinish trim, all you can do to your nail holes is putty, any joint a hair less than perfection is going to stick out like a sore thumb. If you stain it on the wall, all that gets colored, any gaps get colored, any little thing. You fill your nail holes after the first coat of lacquer and buff them, then cover them with the next. Get your color match right, mix in enough whiting to make a good hard clay out of the ball, and once you've gotten the sheen over the whole thing your nails will be all but invisible.
When you paint, obviously you try not to get leaks. But if your drywall isn't perfect, and you get a little gap between trim and wall, you take the tape off, you get a white line. That's another thing visually that staining first gets rid of for you. Yes, of course, you always try to trim it so that doesn't happen, but reality here.
My opinion - prefinished trim works only in extreme circumstances - like it's a Habitat house and thats all they could get out of chairity. You want it to look right, do it right. Take the time to get the trim as good as you can when you put it up, and take the time to obliviate every tiny little defect you can when you finish.
"The child is grown / The dream is gone / And I have become / Comfortably numb " lyrics by Roger Waters
I'm with RW on this, having tried both ways. Now, the only thing I will prefinish before installation is built-in stuff, and even that usually has some fitter or scribed parts around edges that get their final finish on site.
There might be a case for baseboard, though, because a.) it is finished with you down on your knees, and b.) it is usually the last thing run, and less likely to get scarred up. For base, maybe everything but the last coat, before cut, fit, and install.
I trim houses, not paint them. For stained trim the painters stain and seal it then we put it up. Most times they will paint the walls knowing they will have to come back for touch-ups.
If the trim is stained before you put it up you can select the best peices for the most seen parts of the house and the worst for the inside of closets.
You will not have to worry about glue drips that get noticed when it gets stained.
I would not pre stain material that needs to used for mantels, stairs, built-ins. You need to get a clean wood surface for the glue to hold correctly (When you pre-stain the casing you make a fresh cut so the glue can work properly).
If you do sand any pre-stained surfaces you will need to sand down to a fine grit to get the stain to match.
We become by effort primarily what we end up becoming
- Zig Ziglar