painting new drywall

I have done the first step by sealing the drywall using Cloverdale Paint’s Latex Hi Hide Drywall Sealer for drywall or masonry. Now I need to lightly sand before starting the top coats.

After sanding do I need to tack cloth the walls or just blow them off using compressed air?

Do I sand between the 2nd and 3rd (last) coat?

Thanks

 

First of all, I'm not sure why you'd have to sand a drywall sealer. Overall, I'm sensing some overkill in your process.

Top coats, plural? You should be able to apply sealer, then one good quality top coat (assuming it isn't a bright red or yellow.)

If you do sand, I wouldn't bother with a tack cloth (too much dust for a little cloth that costs so much.) I'd wipe down with a damp sponge. But I'd also not sand after the sealer :-)

I usually use Sherwin-Williams SuperPaint, and rarely need more than one coat. If I did need more than one, I'd never sand in between unless I were using a high sheen paint. Some colors, such as bright yellows and reds as I mentioned, could take several coats. In that case, I'd use a gray primer color recommended for the color I picked, then a couple coats of the paint in flat, then my final coat in the sheen I wanted. Therefore, no sanding. But even an eggshell or satin finish, I wouldn't sand. And I wouldn't be putting semi-gloss on a wall :-) Most major paint companies make a top quality paint with high solids, similar to SuperPaint.

 

Usually light sanding the primer results in little to no dust and won't present a problem. While I always sand the primer with new construction [spraying the primer often results with a small amount of trash being embedded in the primer] it usually isn't needed when the wall primer is rolled..... but it doesn't hurt anything

While 1 coat of finish paint may cover, 2 coats often look better and almost always wear better. No need to sand between finish coats unless there are defects in the wall or paint. Any wall repairs made after the 1st coat will need to be primed.

 

Certainly, the more coats you put on, the better the paint will wear, simply by virtue of the fact that you have a thicker coating. But again, a single coat of a quality, high solids paint will put approximately the same thickness as 2 coats of a thinner paint. I guess that is obvious.

What might not be obvious is the sheen of the paint has a lot to do with how it will wear. Flat paint will not wear as well as paints with more sheen. For an area that is going to have glitches cleaned up often, a paint with some gloss will generally clean better. However, they now make more scrubbable flat paints. In the Sherwin-Williams line it's Duration, I'm sure the other major brands have this too.

 

I definitely wouldn't sand between top coats.

If you re-coat within the time alloted in the directions , then a chemical bond will form.

 

i just had basement finished and i did sand after i put drywall primer on. . . but only because the walls felt rough.... the roughness i think was the drywall and not the primer i used.

never hurts to sand lightly.

good luck.

 

It can hurt, actually. If the "roughness" you feel is actually due to the grain in the drywall surface paper, then you definitely don't want to be sanding that. Roughing up the drywall paper is a near disaster. If something feels "rough" like shark skin, that is about right for best adhesion of the next coat. Sanding something glassy smooth is OK for staining and coating furniture with polyurethane, but not best for things to be painted in general. This is why you'd sand a glossy paint before repainting - to make it *rougher*, not smoother. Glossy paint is already smooth, and you don't want that. Generally a surface needs to be either absorptive or rough to accept a paint coat, with roughness sometimes being more important. (For example, concrete is absorptive, but it's important to acid etch to roughen it before coating your garage floor.)