Brushing Fast With Benjamin Moore's Aura

We recently painted this stucco house in Missoula's slant street neighborhood: 

I was trying to make good time and get the job done, so I found myself brushing out this garage door pretty quickly.

At the paint store earlier in the day, I spent about 15 minutes trying to help a fellow painter use Benjamin Moore's Aura Exterior Paint. She didn't get it (this was my second attempt to help her understand what slight modifications you have to do to effectively use Aura like any other paint).We even showed her our video on how to use it, but she insisted that the paint is no good, that you can't just apply it like you would any other paint.

So, being as we use this paint at every job we do and have never had any trouble applying it, I decided to grab our camera from the car and video a couple minutes of trouble-free brushing. And me showing off.

The paint is Benjamin Moore's Bittersweet Chocolate in Aura Low Lustre.

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How to Paint: Using Benjamin Moore's ADVANCE

We recently produced this video for Benjamin Moore--it highlights ADVANCE, their new water-clean-up interior oil-based paint.  It's great for trim or any other place where you might want the look of an oil, but don't want the stink and trouble associated with it.

You don't have to watch the video in tiny format--you can take it to regular, full-sized YouTube if you want by clicking on the video once it starts playing:

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Painting a Bedroom Blue Using Regal Select

Josh cutting in around the door.

Today we're painting a bedroom blue. As always, we're using Benjamin Moore Paint, although instead of our usual Aura, we're using Regal Select. It's another premium paint, and even though it costs a little less than Aura, it is still self-priming on most surfaces, and gave us good coverage.


We would have used Aura in this case, especially to ensure great hide with such a deep, bold color, but when we had the custom color matched, they only had Regal Select in quarts and not Aura. And since we started with Regal, we just decided to use it since the paint tech would have had to custom match the initial custom match in order to switch products!


We were both glad to try it out, though, since we rarely would ever choose to use a lesser quality paint than Aura (Aura always works really well for us, generally performing better than one could expect, in pretty much every situation). For us, using Aura is a sort of an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of thing.

This is a color sample we brushed out on the wall. Notice how we
feathered the edges, leaving no thickness at all. Once the wall is
painted, you won't know we ever sampled anything.

We patched the holes in this wall using Vinyl Spackle--it dries fast and
sands smooth (these walls are smooth finish with no texture).

After laying out our drop cloths, patching holes, and caulking cracks, we
cut in the edges of the room with 3-inch brushes.

A bit blurry, but this is Josh cutting in the edge of the door. Notice that
he is not using tape to try and mask an edge.

All cut in and now we're ready to roll.

We did mask the baseboard since it is staying the same color. The
tape won't give us a perfect edge, but it helps keep most of the blue
off the light trim.

Josh rolling the walls.

The first coat is complete--note how well it covered the old color.
We applied a second coat, which deepened the color.

Regal Select.

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From Dog Room to Baby Room 2

So I got all fired up last night and applied the first coat of Bittersweet Chocolate to the walls of the transforming Dog Room. Even though the pictures don't do the color justice, you can pretty easily see how well Aura covered in one coat.

Justin brushing a straight line without tape.

I always move too fast when someone is trying to capture me painting. You can see how I first went around the room, brushing in the edges. You should brush about a brush-width, which is enough for a roller to get close to corners but not hit the ceiling.

This is especially important if you aren't painting the ceiling (I have zero room for error when touching the ceiling since I don't have touch-up paint for it).

Justin with brush in hand.

I always feel like such a cheeseball when posing for pictures, but I guess you might as well see me on site. Note that I painted the edges of the walls surrounding the window and ceiling and left the rest for the roller to tackle. I could have brushed it since it's such a small area, but rolling goes a lot faster.

Wow, my hair sure looks sharp and pointy tonight! Just for the record,
 that's not my goal. I need a haircut.

Again, I brushed in all the edges of the walls then rolled the big spaces.

I didn't get any pictures of me rolling, but we'll leave that for a video or 2 later on.



This is one coat of Aura--it still needs the second application to be perfect, but this is one hallmark of a great quality paint.



It is now well on its way to becoming a different sort of place.I still need to finish up the second coat and the trim. Then we can move in the the baby stuff.

















Note that I a didn't use a roller tray. Instead, I am used a 5 gallon bucket with a roller grid, as well as a 2 foot Wooster roller pole.

The professional roller setup.

In future posts, including in videos, I will demonstrate the benefits of using this sort of roller setup and not the roller tray (at least for most projects, anyway).

These shots are so blown out that I am a bit embarrassed to post them, but it's so bright and snowy outside today that it just blasts through the blinds. I guess I should use my good camera and not my phone.
The Droid camera is only so good despite what they say.

Okay, this picture is ultra dark, but short of setting up some lights or waiting for the sun to go away, I haven't been able to get better pics off the painted walls so far.





Still, look how well it covered!

We're thinking about putting up a vinyl wall decal of a tree of some sort, although we need to decide where we will put the big dresser so we know which wall(s) to do it on.

























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Using Benjamin Moore's ADVANCE

This week we worked on a nice remodel project that included the preparation and painting of these simple 6-panel doors (16 total doors). We also sanded, primed, and painted this bookshelf, which had previously been factory stained and sealed. For all the trim and the bookshelf, we used Benjamin Moore's ADVANCE, interior water-clean-up, oil-based paint. It's a great choice if you want the durability of an oil but don't want the smell and trouble usually associated with traditional oil.

Unfortunately, the bookcase proved to be difficult for my Droid to properly capture. Still, I think you can see the nice finish we ended up with in the end.

For more information on how to apply Advance, take a look at our instructional video on it. It will show you pretty much everything you need to know about using it.

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