I'm learning some valuable lessons with the garage overhaul we're attempting. As I mentioned before parts of our garage had been drywalled twenty years ago when we moved into our house, and recently we had the other walls drywalled and taped as well. I've been in the process of painting the ceiling and those walls this last week, and I've learned that there's a reason there are a variety of primers on the market. One primer doesn't necessarily fit all circumstances.
First, let me apologize for the mess below that is currently our garage. It's no wonder we are renovating it. Usually it doesn't look {quite} this bad. We'd shoved all the stuff in our garage into this one corner for the reno, so it looked particularly deplorable in this picture. Anyway. You'll notice the twenty-year-old never-been-painted drywall had yellowed with age. There were also some water spots on it. The new drywall was a pristine gray color without any marks other than the putty used to tape it and fill in the holes.
When I asked the clerk at Home Depot, which primer I should use to cover my new drywall he suggested this...
It worked perfectly on the new drywall, covering it beautifully with a layer of primer before I painted the walls. However, when I used this product on the old drywall, it didn't cover them well and some water stains bled through the primer. I realized this Kilz Pro-X P10 is specifically mixed for new drywall and that I would need another stain blocking primer for the old walls. The water marks on the bottom of the old drywall were probably due to snow shovels, still wet, being placed against the garage wall. I went back to Home Depot and was pointed toward another primer that is mixed specifically to block stains and water marks...
I just needed one coat of this stain blocking primer on the old drywall. The stains vanished, and it worked beautifully!
This piece of advice is probably obvious to most, but I've done a lot of painting and didn't know what a difference the right primer would make, so I hope it helps someone.
